IBM has been awarded an average of 24 patents per day so far in 2016; Quartz, 6/2/16

[2,500th post since this blog was started in 2008--Kip Currier]

Mike Murphy, Quartz; IBM has been awarded an average of 24 patents per day so far in 2016:

"The media tends to focus on the crazy things Google, Facebook, and Apple patent, but they’re still dwarfed by more traditional companies like IBM and Samsung when it comes to the number of patents they’re awarded each year. Through the first half of 2016, IBM has, yet again, been the leader in technology patents, averaging roughly 23.6 patents awarded each day..."

The company is in the middle of a painful reinvention, that sees the company shifting further away from hardware sales into cloud computing, analytics, and AI services. It’s also plugging away on a myriad of fundamental scientific research projects—many of which could revolutionize the world if they can come to fruition—which is where many of its patent applications originate."

Public info, now: As county and city improve, the state stays lousy; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/6/16

Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Public info, now: As county and city improve, the state stays lousy:

"County officials in recent days have rolled out new online tools to make certain types of public information more accessible.

Controller Chelsa Wagner on Thursday debuted alleghenycounty.opengov.com, which features graphs, charts and sortable data about spending, vendors, employees, salaries and benefits. She also introduced allegheny.openbookportal.com, providing instant access to contracts with vendors...

Local governments are getting better at providing basic financial and vendor information to the public, and some officials, such as city Controller Michael Lamb, take pride in providing easy access to public information...

Across the state, however, access to public documents is uneven, and obtaining anything beyond routine documents, such as annual budgets, often involves a cumbersome right-to-know process in which the government agency drags its feet and attempts to keep secret anything potentially embarrassing or controversial. Incremental progress on openness should be applauded, but it is important to remember that the larger battle is far from won."

The Google/Oracle decision was bad for copyright and bad for software; Ars Technica, 6/2/16

Peter Bright, Ars Technica; The Google/Oracle decision was bad for copyright and bad for software:

"Oracle's long-running lawsuit against Google has raised two contentious questions. The first is whether application programming interfaces (APIs) should be copyrightable at all. The second is whether, if they are copyrightable, repurposing portions of those APIs can be done without a license in the name of "fair use.""

Open-access journal eLife gets £25-million boost; Nature, 6/1/16

Ewen Callaway, Nature; Open-access journal eLife gets £25-million boost:

"When three of the world’s biggest private biomedical funders launched the journal eLife in 2012, they wanted to shake up the way in which scientists published their top papers. The new journal would be unashamedly elitist, competing with biology’s traditional ‘big three’, Nature, Science and Cell, to publish the best work. But unlike these, eLife would use working scientists as editors, and it would be open access. And with backers providing £18 million (US$26 million) over five years, authors wouldn’t need to pay anything to publish there.

Four years and more than 1,800 publications later, eLife’s funders — the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the Wellcome Trust in London and the Max Planck Society in Berlin — announced on 1 June that they will continue their support. They will back the non-profit eLife organization with a further £25 million between 2017 and 2022 (see ‘eLife by the numbers’)."

Madonna prevails in copyright lawsuit over 'Vogue' song; Reuters, 6/2/16

Dan Levine, Reuters; Madonna prevails in copyright lawsuit over 'Vogue' song:

"In a 2-1 vote, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California ruled that a general audience would not recognize the 0.23-second snippet in "Vogue" as originating from the song "Love Break."

Shep Pettibone, a producer of "Vogue," also recorded "Love Break" in the early 1980's, according to the court ruling.

The plaintiff, VMG Salsoul LLC, owns the copyright to "Love Break" and alleged Pettibone sampled the "horn hit" from the earlier work and added it to "Vogue."...

The dissenting judge, Barry Silverman, said even a small sample of music, used without a license, should be a copyright violation. "In any other context, this would be called theft," Silverman wrote.

Robert Besser, a lawyer for VMG Salsoul, said in a phone interview: "I agree with the dissent because it should be an infringement for copying any piece of any sound recording." He said his client would review its legal options."

Game of Thrones is taking action against Pornhub for breach of copyright; BBC News, 6/1/16

BBC News; Game of Thrones is taking action against Pornhub for breach of copyright:

"The makers of Game of Thrones are taking action against Pornhub over breach of copyright.

HBO says it's because some scenes from the show have appeared on the site.

Some other videos even include parodies of porn stars pretending to be characters such as Cersei Lannister and Lord Varys from Game of Thrones."

Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law; New York Times, 5/31/16

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law:

"The fight over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has touched a nerve. The music industry is bracing for what may be a high-wattage lobbying battle reminiscent of the one over the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that was abandoned in 2012 after opposition from technology activists and Internet giants like Google and Wikipedia.

The copyright law gives “safe harbor” to Internet service providers that host third-party material. While music groups criticize the law, some legal scholars and policy specialists say any change to it would need to be considered carefully, particularly to preserve protections like fair use.

“Anything that rewrites the D.M.C.A. isn’t just going to affect YouTube,” said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at the University of Maryland. “It is going to affect blogs. It is going to affect fan sites. It is going to affect places for game creators and documentarians and all kinds of others.”

In December, the United States Copyright Office asked for comments about D.M.C.A. as part of a review of the law, and filings by record companies show how laborious copyright policing can be."