Chief Justice Calls U.S. Patent Challenge Process Bizarre; Reuters via New York Times, 4/2/5/16

Reuters via New York Times; Chief Justice Calls U.S. Patent Challenge Process Bizarre:

"U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday described as bizarre the legal process used by companies to challenge competitors' patents as the Supreme Court heard a case involving a vehicle speedometer that alerts drivers if they are driving too quickly.

The eight justices heard an appeal filed by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, whose speedometer patent was invalidated in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review board procedure after being challenged by GPS device maker Garmin Ltd in 2012.

The issue before the justices during a one-hour argument in the case was whether the U.S. government has made it too easy for companies to pursue challenges to the patents of other companies...

Roberts was the most outspoken critic among the eight justices of the current system in which companies can adopt a dual-track strategy by challenging patents simultaneously in federal court and through the agency review board."

Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule; New York Times, 4/23/16

Penelope Green, New York Times; Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule:

"These high stakes may be why so many young-adult and fantasy authors find themselves ensnared by lawsuits.

In February, Ms. Clare was sued for copyright infringement, among other charges, by Sherrilyn Kenyon, an American young-adult author who writes an urban fantasy series about demon killers named Dark-Hunters. Ms. Clare’s lawyer, John R. Cahill, said he expected the suit to be dismissed and issued a statement that read, in part, “The lawsuit failed to identify a single instance of actual copying or plagiarism by Cassie.”

But the dispute puts Ms. Clare in good company: Ms. Meyer; Rick Riordan, another successful author who drew from Greek mythology when he created his young-adult series; and Ms. Rowling have all been sued for plagiarism, often more than once."

Prince; RobRogers.com, 4/24/16

Rob Rogers, RobRogers.com; Prince

"Prince's impact will continue to be felt..."

Canadian journal breaks new ground in open access science; Globe and Mail, 4/12/16

Ivan Semeniuk, Globe and Mail; Canadian journal breaks new ground in open access science:

"On Tuesday, Canadian Science Publishing – an organization born out of the downsizing of the National Research Council – officially launches FACETS, an online multidisciplinary journal that is Canada’s most ambitious effort yet to carve a niche in the burgeoning world of open access science.

FACETS will charge a fee of $1,350 for each paper it publishes, a few hundred dollars less than the cost of publishing in PLOS ONE, the world’s leading open access journal, which uses a similar model.

But while PLOS ONE requires only that a scientific paper be technically sound for publication, FACETS will also require that each paper it publishes contributes new knowledge, Dr. Blais said.

FACETS will also publish opinion pieces and articles on science policy, he added, providing a forum that could lead to a more public airing of issues related to science in Canada and its interaction with government and politics."

Is Open Access To Research Biden's Answer To Curing Cancer?; Forbes, 4/22/16

Lindsey Tepe, Forbes; Is Open Access To Research Biden's Answer To Curing Cancer? :

"Vice President Joe Biden sees hope beyond the horizon for cancer research. As the man tapped by President Obama to tackle the disease with a new “cancer moonshot,” Biden addressed the nation’s leading cancer experts at their annual research meeting this week by invoking an example from outer space—the Hubble Telescope—and laying out an exciting vision for open research in the process.

The Hubble Space Telescope mission promised to bring into focus faraway objects, celestial bodies beyond the view of astronomers. But when it was first launched in 1990, a faulty mirror blurred the telescope’s vision—it wasn’t until three years later that the NASA team was able, using tiny mirrors, to improve its sight and take its first, sharp photographs of the universe. With the addition of improved spectrograph technology a few short years later, the team was able to improve its search for supermassive black holes...

Openness isn’t just an argument for the public interest, though perhaps that’s where it starts. Taxpayers in the United States currently fund almost $5 billion in cancer research annually, with an additional $800 million in the President’s Budget for fiscal year 2017 to support cancer research. Right now, the results of that research are overwhelmingly published in closed journals that can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars to access. When even Harvard can’t keep pace with the rising cost of journal subscriptions, just imagine what that means for everyone else.

Quoting an op-ed published on Monday in Wired by Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley, Biden asked the researchers assembled to imagine if, instead, we broke down these barriers to cancer research and made the findings of our public investment openly available to all. Establishing a system of open access—free, immediate access to research articles online, coupled with legal permissions to reuse it—holds the potential to address distorted priorities built into this closed system for publication."

E.U. urged to free all scientific papers by 2020; Science, 4/14/16

Martin Enserink, Science; E.U. urged to free all scientific papers by 2020:

"One of the perks of holding the rotating presidency of the European Union is that it gives a member state a 6-month megaphone to promote its favorite policy ideas. For the Netherlands, which took over the presidency on 1 January, one surprising priority is open access (OA) to the scientific literature. Last week, the Dutch government held a 2-day meeting here in which European policymakers, research funders, librarians, and publishers discussed how to advance OA. The meeting produced an Amsterdam Call to Action that included the ambition to make all new papers published in the European Union freely available by 2020.

Given the slow pace with which OA has gained ground the past 10 years, few believe that’s actually possible, but the document is rallying support."

Pennsylvania Announces Open Data Portal; Government Technology, 4/18/16

Colin Wood, Government Technology; Pennsylvania Announces Open Data Portal:

"Pennsylvania is renewing its commitment to transparency.

On April 18, Gov. Tom Wolf, who assumed office in January, signed an executive order to create an open data portal. The new portal is mandated to contain downloadable, machine-readable data, a feature not offered by the state’s existing transparency site called PennWATCH. The state Office of Administration is also mandated to help agencies find their most valuable data sets...

The commonwealth’s data portal efforts are to be led by Julie Snyder, director of the Office of Data and Digital Technology at the Office of Administration. By working closely with the state’s agencies, civic hacker community, universities and cities, she will identify which data sets are most useful to be unlocked first, said Sharon Minnich, secretary of the Office of Administration. To develop its plan, Minnich said, Pennsylvania not only looked around the nation to spot best practices, but also assessed plans closer to home, asking Pittsburgh for advice.

“There’s a lot of open data out there that doesn’t necessarily get downloaded, so we want to make sure we put out the most valuable information,” she said. “In speaking to the universities, there really were a broad spectrum of interests. It’s going to depend on what the use cases would be for those data sets we would publish.”"