Copyright Week 2018: Join Us in Fighting for Better Copyright Law and Policy; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), January 15, 2018

Katharine Trendacosta, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Copyright Week 2018: Join Us in Fighting for Better Copyright Law and Policy

"We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation."

Primary school children need to learn about intellectual property, Government agency says ; Telegraph, January 20, 2018

Camilla Turner, Telegraph; 

Primary school children need to learn about intellectual property, Government agency says 

"Primary school children should be taught about copyright law and intellectual property amid a rise in social media, a Government agency has said.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has launched a raft of teaching resources and videos aimed at helping children aged seven to 11 learn about piracy, patents and trademarks.

Catherine Davies, head of the IPO’s education outreach department, said that children start using technology and social media at an increasingly young age, so by the time they are teenagers it is already too late to teach them about respecting copyright laws." 

Every College Student's Dream: An 8 AM Class On Patents; Wired, January 20, 2018

David Kline, Wired; Every College Student's Dream: An 8 AM Class On Patents

[Kip Currier: Money quote from this Wired article making a very persuasive quantitative and qualitative argument for more Intellectual Property (IP) undergraduate courses--

 "...IP literacy is not just for lawyers anymore."

As a related aside: Reflecting an increasing student desire and need for IP education, two out of every three terms per academic year since 2009, I've been teaching an IP elective course to graduate students at Pitt's School of Information Sciences (now the School of Computing and Information). 

Additionally, in IP guest talks I've given for undergraduate students participating in Pitt's groundbreaking iSchool Inclusion Institute, it's been exciting to see first-hand many students' interest in augmenting their IP awareness...as well as more and more students creating and leveraging their own IP works!]

"Nor is there any doubt that IP plays a pivotal role in powering today’s knowledge economy, where intangible assets such as IP represent more than 80 percent of the market value of all publicly traded companies. Indeed, intellectual-property-intensive industries now account for a surprising 38.2 percent of total US GDP, according to a recent US Department of Commerce report. That’s more than $6 trillion a year, more than the GDP of any other nation except China. IP-based industries are also responsible for 30 percent, of national employment, or roughly 40 million jobs.

Yet despite IP's enormous role in the US economy, few universities offer any sort of course on IP to undergraduates. Among the first is the University of Southern California, which last fall launched a course on the basic workings of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. The new course, through the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies within USC’s Marshall School of Business, aims to train tomorrow’s leaders in the skills they need to navigate our increasingly IP-driven economy...

Put another way, just as tech literacy was once a requirement only for IT specialists but is now considered almost as essential as verbal literacy, IP literacy is not just for lawyers anymore.

All of which calls to mind that scene from the 1967 movie The Graduate, when Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke) offers career advice to a young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman)?

“Plastics!” he says. “There’s a great future in plastics.”

Half a century later, USC is demonstrating that intellectual property has become the new watchword for almost any career of the future."

Brain Power Pays Off With Japan’s Intellectual Property Exports; Bloomberg, January 15, 2018

Connor Cislo, Bloomberg; Brain Power Pays Off With Japan’s Intellectual Property Exports

"Given the importance of IP to their economies, Japan and other advanced nations such as the U.S. are trying to strengthen protections in this area.

Japan nearly saw its preferred IP protection regime realized in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, until President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the agreement threw the pact's future into doubt.

The remaining 11 TPP members have suspended multiple IP-related provisions from the original agreement. Meanwhile, another large trade deal championed by China, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, doesn’t address IP to the satisfaction of Japanese businesses."

Parsing the patents: CMU seeking clear answers on AI in workforce; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 15, 2018

Daniel Moore, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Parsing the patents: CMU seeking clear answers on AI in workforce

"...[T]here has been sparse research into what local governments and foundations can do to cushion the blow of technology: Precisely where, how and in what professions will some of the biggest disruptors — driven by artificial intelligence — roll out first? 

“The advantage of our approach is you can see in a very granular way, where these inventions are emerging,” said Lee Branstetter, a CMU professor of economics and public policy leading the new study that is relying in part of patent filings. “And how this is all changing over time.”

The research is one of two projects awarded a total of $550,000 from the Heinz Endowments, which is marking the launch of its Future of Work initiative...

Put together, patents can be used to visualize where artificial intelligence is making gains. The idea is to display artificial intelligence shifts on a map that shows different regions and industries."

Jack Kirby’s 100 Coolest Comic Book Creations; Comic Book Resources, August 28, 2017

Brian Cronin, Comic Book Resources; Jack Kirby’s 100 Coolest Comic Book Creations

"Today would have been the 100th birthday of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby. Comic book fans and creators from all over the world are spending today sharing their favorite memories on social media about the comic book icon. When we were thinking of ways to celebrate his tremendous impact on the world of comic books, we realized that one of the easiest ways to visualize Kirby’s impact was just to list 100 of his coolest comic book creations. So that’s just what we’re going to do. We’re going to alphabetically list 100 amazingly awesome comic book creations by Jack “The King” Kirby and we’re combing characters as much as possible, so this could easily be waaaaaaay over 100 (the X-Men, for instance, are just one entry when they could easily be six between Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel and Iceman). Enjoy!"

United States: Even Bambi Is A Trade Secret: Eastern District Of Texas Finds That Lineage And Genetic Information Of Deer Are Trade Secrets, Grants Preliminary Injunction; Mondaq, August 22, 2017

Michael D. Weil and Tierra Piens, Mondaq; United States: Even Bambi Is A Trade Secret: Eastern District Of Texas Finds That Lineage And Genetic Information Of Deer Are Trade Secrets, Grants Preliminary Injunction

"Earlier this year, the North American Deer Registry (NADR) filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Texas alleging trade secrets misappropriation under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Oklahoma Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Specifically, NADR alleged that its vendor, DNA Solutions (DNAS), retained NADR's trade secret information, the contents of the database, after the conclusion of their contractual relationship.

NADR hired DNAS to process the genetic information of various deer, perform genetic matching services, and host a database that eventually contained information on 230,000 deer. The contractual agreement contained a "Return of Information" provision that required DNAS to return "all NADR and NADR member Information, Biological Materials, Genetic Information and Genotype Data" at the conclusion of their contractual relationship. The contract expired on January 1, 2017. Per the contract, DNAS returned the information regarding the deer in NADR's registry, but DNAS admittedly retained a duplicate of the information."