Amazon Is Considering Drone-Friendly Floating Warehouses; Fortune, 12/29/16

Don Reisinger, Fortune; Amazon Is Considering Drone-Friendly Floating Warehouses:

"The e-commerce giant has been awarded a patent that describes a logistics technology it calls "airborne fulfillment center (AFC)." The AFC is essentially in airship that's capable of flying at altitudes of 45,000 feet or more that would house items the company sells through its online marketplace. In the patent, Amazon describes a method by which drones would fly into the warehouse, pick up the items they need to deliver, and then deliver those items to the customer's home.

Amazon filed for the patent in 2014. While it was actually awarded in April, it wasn't discovered until Wednesday by CB Insights tech analyst Zoe Leavitt."

Amazon Has Patented Some Wild Drone Technologies; Discover, 12/29/16

Nathaniel Scharping, Discover; 

Amazon Has Patented Some Wild Drone Technologies:

"Earlier this month, a fully autonomous Amazon drone delivered its first package in the United Kingdom — an Amazon Fire TV and a bag of popcorn — in just 13 minutes. The company says it hopes to expand the program in coming months, allowing select customers to have their packages brought to them via drone, weather permitting of course.

Any such implementation in the U.S. will have to wait a little longer, as current FAA regulations do not permit drones to be flown out of a pilot’s line of sight. Amazon seems to anticipate that those rules will soon change, however, and has filed a bevy of patents over the past couple of years aimed at upgrading their drone technology to make it fast, safe and efficient.

These patents may never see the light of day, of course, as it’s common for corporations to snap up the rights to forward-looking technologies before they come to fruition."

Open Access Rewards Passionate Curiosity: 2016 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 12/24/16

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Open Access Rewards Passionate Curiosity: 2016 in Review:

"In February 2016, a team of scientists published one of the most important pieces of scientific research so far this century. For the first time, researchers had directly observed gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime whose discovery Albert Einstein first predicted a century ago. The team effectively placed the last piece in the puzzle confirming Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity—in doing so, they took a giant leap forward in humans’ understanding of how the universe works.

Something else was confirmed that day, too: open access publishing is no inferior sibling to closed publishing. The paper—Observational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger (PDF)—was published in an open access journal under a Creative Commons license that ensures anyone can copy, adapt, and reuse it as long as they give the authors credit.

Put simply, open access is the practice of making research and other materials freely available online, ideally under licenses that allow anyone to share and adapt them. For years, open access publishing has been at the center of a struggle over the future of research: will cutting-edge scholarship be published in the open for anyone to see, use, and build upon? Or will it stay trapped in a labyrinth of closed publications only to be read by those who can afford expensive journal subscriptions and academic databases?

In many ways, 2015 was academic publishing’s Napster moment. As publishing giant Elsevier fought to keep Sci-Hub off the Internet, it accomplished just the opposite. While the legal battle between Elsevier and Sci-Hub has trudged through 2016, more people than ever have begun using the unauthorized academic research repository.

Maybe 2016 was the year publishers realized they had to change course. Elsevier agreed to compromise with the Dutch academic community, allowing researchers covered by the publisher’s blanket agreement with Dutch universities to publish their research openly. That’s a small step, but an indicator that Elsevier recognizes the significance of the demand for open access."

Trademarks - New Year, Clean Start; National Law Review, 12/28/16

Sterne Kessler, National Law Review; Trademarks - New Year, Clean Start:

"As 2016 draws to a close, now is the perfect time to slow down (or at least try), wrap up loose ends, and plan for the promise and possibility of a new year.

For businesses, the holidays are a particularly good time to take stock of assets and consider opportunities on the horizon.  And, because brand assets are among a business's most valuable properties, taking a year-end look at trademarks is a great way to ensure the portfolio is primed to work for the business in the coming year.   

Following are some tips to help kick-start an annual year-end trademark audit..."

Dark Skies for International Copyright: 2016 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 12/28/16

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF);

Dark Skies for International Copyright: 2016 in Review:

"It's hard to imagine that a year ago we were celebrating "positive movement" towards reforms to European copyright law, expecting that the European Commission would be soon proposing new copyright exceptions and other measures to modernize Europe's aging copyright regime. Instead, what we got was a proposal to force user-generated content websites to do deals with copyright holders to scan and filter users' uploads, along with a proposal to give news publishers the power to impose a link tax on third-party websites such as news aggregators."

Facebook Developing Copyright ID System to Stem Music Rights Infringement; Billboard, 12/28/16

Dan Rys, Billboard; Facebook Developing Copyright ID System to Stem Music Rights Infringement:

"As Facebook continues to grapple with its role in proliferating "fake news" amidst the heated U.S. election this year, it has another showdown looming on the horizon -- this one with the music industry. In the wake of NMPA president/CEO David Israelite's op-ed in Billboard in October, in which he called out the social media giant for hosting videos with copyrighted music without securing licensing deals or paying creators, Facebook is working to develop a copyright identification system -- similar to YouTube's Content ID -- that would find and remove videos containing copyrighted music, a source tells Billboard. The story was first reported by the Financial Times."

When are trade secrets not so secret? When Florida’s governor says so; Miami Herald, 12/16/16

Mary Ellen Klas, Miami Herald; When are trade secrets not so secret? When Florida’s governor says so:

"“A contract with a public agency paid for with taxpayer money is not a trade secret,” he said. He noted that Pitbull’s lawyers argued that, but they were wrong.

“Just because somebody claims it’s a trade secret, doesn’t mean it is a trade secret.”"