Amazon Has a New U.S. Patent to Protect Its Drones; Fortune, 12/22/16

Madeline Farber, Fortune; Amazon Has a New U.S. Patent to Protect Its Drones:

"Amazon received a technology patent this week to give its drones extra anti-hacking protection when making deliveries, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Amazon filed for the patented technology covering countermeasures against threats to drones, or uncrewed autonomous vehicles (UAV), because it said that third parties could interfere with a drone's wireless communications system using a wireless signal jammer...

The drones, or UAVs, are used for Amazon's Prime Air delivery service. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant successfully delivered its first package with a drone in the United Kingdom. The drones are designed to deliver packages of up to five pounds in less than 30 minutes, according to Amazon. Currently, Prime Air has development centers in the U.K., U.S., Austria, and Israel. The company has yet to get regulatory approval to fly drones in the U.S."

The Future of Open Government; Huffington Post, 12/19/16

Manish Bapna, Huffington Post; The Future of Open Government:

"This blog post is co-authored with Jean-Vincent Placé, French Minister of State for State Reform and Simplification, attached to the Prime Minister.

More than 4,000 people gathered in Paris from 7-9th December for the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit 2016 hosted by the Government of France. OGP is a unique partnership dedicated to making government decision making more open, inclusive and responsive. Summit attendees included representatives from 80 governments, many of them heads of state and senior ministers; leaders from cities, municipalities and regions; and leading civil society organizations from around the world.

The goal for the summit was to highlight the crucial role of open government as a countervailing force to the rise of various forms of nationalism and populism around the world."

Patent Bar Braces for Game-Changing Supreme Court Case; Inside Counsel, 12/19/16

Scott Graham, Inside Counsel; Patent Bar Braces for Game-Changing Supreme Court Case:

"The U.S. Supreme Court has heard more than 30 patent cases over the last 10 years. A case the high court accepted for review Wednesday could have more impact than any of them since a 2006 decision scaling back injunctions, in the eye of at least one experienced patent litigator.

TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands "could be the biggest change since the eBay case," said Haynes and Boone partner Kenneth Parker. "The biggest case of the decade."...

Patent litigators say Eastern Texas has become the venue of choice for a number of reasons: Juries are willing to award more damages, cases are brought to trial quickly, the trials themselves are kept shorter, summary judgment is harder to obtain, and Section 101 patent eligibility motions, which can quickly shut down a suit in other courts, are generally not decided early in the litigation."

Intellectual Property: Copyright rules make us break the law 80 times a day, says Productivity Commission; Sydney Morning Herald, 12/20/26

Peter Martin, Intellectual Property: Copyright rules make us break the law 80 times a day, says Productivity Commission:

"If you are anything like the typical Australian, you probably break the copyright law 80 times a day, according to figures included in the Productivity Commission's final report to the government on intellectual property.

Most of the breaches are harmless, things such as including a copy of an email in the reply to an email. But the commission says that laws that are routinely flouted are bad laws, bringing themselves into disrepute.

In place of the labyrinthine system of complicated rules governing what can or can't be copied, the report released on Tuesday recommends the US system of fair use, under which the use of copyrighted material is legal so long as it is fair, taking into account the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, the amount copied and the effect on the potential market value of the work."

Should Couples Get Prenups for Their Ideas?; New York Times, 12/21/16

Room for Debate, New York Times; Should Couples Get Prenups for Their Ideas? :

"The number of 18- to 35-year-olds seeking prenups is on the rise nationwide, but many millennials are more interested in protecting intellectual property — such as films, songs, software and even apps that haven’t been built yet — than cash.

What does this shift mean for marriage and divorce?"

No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/16/16

Intellectual Property Watch; No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals:

"After licensing negotiations between German university libraries and Elsevier failed at the beginning of the month, over 60 university libraries in Germany are preparing to be cut off from hundreds of journals of the British publisher, after a standoff over pricing and access.

The university libraries organised in the DEAL initiative rejected an offer made by Elsevier earlier this month for a first nationwide licence, because of an aggressive pricing and flaws in the access models...

With the stop of the negotiations access to future journal editions be cut off on 1 January, when current licenses are expiring. But there will also be no access to archived editions of journals licensed under “individual e-packages for the economic sciences in particular,” according to the message."

Open Government Data Act set for progress in 2017 after Senate passage; FedScoop, 12/12/16

Samantha Ehlinger, FedScoop; Open Government Data Act set for progress in 2017 after Senate passage:

"A bill codifying and building on the president's executive order and the White House’s Open Data Policy passed the Senate unanimously early on Saturday morning, in a surprising last-minute effort to get the bill through the chamber before the holidays.

The OPEN Government Data Act, which sets in place a presumption that government data should be published in an open, machine-readable format, will likely not make it to President Barack Obama’s desk. But the bill could be reintroduced next year.

“Because transparency keeps Washington accountable to the people, government data should be made public unless an administration makes a compelling reason not to,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who introduced the legislation with Sen. Brian Schatz D-Hawaii, in a statement. “After passing the Senate with bipartisan support, we have momentum to carry this important work into the new year.”"