How science is shackled by intellectual property

Ownership rights pose a real danger to scientific progress for the public good.
Intellectual property (IP) requires a strong lead from the government. The David Nutt affair has illustrated the importance of objective analysis of complex social issues. There is a myth about IP, it says that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. It must encourage inventors. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it. Companies by the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products.

Science and innovation in universities are privatized. The boost to commercialize science has overtaken the ‘blue-skies’ research, so knowledge is transformed. We take a patent on knowledge because of our need for profit. For example, 20% of individual human genes have been patented or have been filed for patenting. This has of course a result, research on certain genes is in large numbers restricted to the companies that hold the patents and tests involving them have huge p prices. This is a huge danger to the development of science for the public good.

Science and innovation have nourished our society and economy for years. We need to consider how to balance the needs of science as an industry. For science to continue to flourish, it is necessary that the knowledge is free and widely available. IP rights have the tendency to stifle access to knowledge and the free exchange of ideas that is essential to science.

Science and the many benefits that science has produced have a crucial part in our history and produced improvements to human welfare. We have to recognize the importance of science as an industry and investment in research to national and regional economic development.

The Manchester Manifesto, an international group of experts, explores these problems and points the way to future solutions that will more effectively protect science, innovation and the public good.

I think that we indeed have to reduce the patents on knowledge. We need the knowledge to develop, to make a better world. We use knowledge and science to improve for example our health, if we can’t use the knowledge that we need or we have to pay a huge amount of money for it, we will fail in further developing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/science-shackles-intellectual-property

Using a patent as protection

This week, we have to write our last blog. During the last lesson, we have discussed intellectual property. Intellectual property can be defined as legal property rights over creations of mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Exemples of intellectual property are trademarks or copyrights.
Today, I will talk about patents. We can define a patent as a set of exclusive rights that is granted by a state to an inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention.

I found the article on the site as mentioned at the end of the text. It’s about the patenting of software and business methods. The article states that the patenting of software has always been more accessible to American inventors than to their European colleagues. Concerning using a patent, there are advocates and opponents. It’s said that newcomers in the market can secure themselves a place in the market by getting a patent on their software. By using a patent, they have a stronger position facing large companies as IBM and Microsoft. On the other hand, critics say that agreements between large companies make the market inaccessible to smaller companies, who don”t have the sources to make such arrangements. These companies must make sure that they don’t touch any patents. If they do, they can get a fine.

What’s my own opinion about this? I think that using a patent is a good idea to protect someone’s inventions. Otherwise, everyone will copy it. This can be defined as competition and infringement of copyright. I also have to admit that it’s a good idea for large companies like Coca-Cola. I also think that’s better to use it for huge inventions as Coca-Cola because Coca-Cola has a secret recipe to create the taste of it.


Source: http://www.ip-brands.com/content/news/articles/us-patents.aspx

Dibango takes Michael Jaskson and Rihanna to court

My last blog is about intellectual property.
For this blog, I found an article on the internet about a discussion of plagiarism.

Manu Dibango, a Cameroonian saxophonist, lives in Paris. He filed a lawsuit in Paris against both Rihanna and Michael Jackson. Dibango, aged 75 years, is really convinced about the fact that Jackson and Rihanna have stolen several parts from his song: ‘Soul Makossa’ for their song ‘Wanna be startin something’.
Jackson already admitted that he used parts of ‘Soul Makossa’ for his song ‘Wanna be startin something’. But he says that he had an arrangement with Dibango ,a couple of years ago, about this.

The new court is about Jackson, who gave permission to Rihanna to use a part of his song for her single ‘Please don’t stop the music’. Dibango says he never gave permission to Jackson for this.

Dibango is demanding 650.000 Euros in damages and he asked the France Court of Justice to freeze all ‘mama –say mama –sa’-related income of the plate companies Sony BMG, EMI and Warner, until the matter is resolved.
Recently, Michael Jackson was accused by the director of the video clip ‘Thriller’. The filmmaker ,John Landis, didn’t get any royalties during the last four years. Although, they had signed a contract to get both half of income obtained from the video.

I think it must be really hard for a 'little musician' to sue big artists like Michael Jackson and Rihanna. They have a lot of connections and they have the best lawyers, who will try everything in court to get their right. It also costs a lot of money when you lose the case.

A lot of text and musicparts are stolen from other people, but the victims are powerless or they don’t see a reason to do all the effort. It's not feasable,people think.
But I believe in court and in Justice. It may not matter how poor or how rich and famous you are.



Source:
http://www.annet.be/celeb/plagiaat

Infringement by Microsoft

Last week I thought it was the last blog we had to right but it wasn’t. Now the really last blog is about intellectual property.

For this last blog I found a movie on YouTube about Microsoft who is guilty of infringement.
A Chinese court has announced that Microsoft was found guilty of infringing the intellectual property rights of local company Zhongyi Electronic Limited in China.
They ruled that Microsoft Corp infringed the intellectual property rights of the Chinese company by using a certain font. The decision was made as US President Barack Obama was on a visit to China.

On April 23, 2007, Zhongyi Electronic Limited sued Microsoft for using Zhongyi's "Zheng Ma" input method in its Windows operating systems without payment for ten years.

The company is the copyright owner of the "Zheng Ma" input method and it also owns the copyrights of the bold typeface, covering about 40,000 Chinese characters. The court said Microsoft had installed and used fonts in eight operating systems beyond what Zhongyi had agreed on.

According to the court, Microsoft just has infringed the copyrights of Zhongyi's typefaces, but not the using of "Zheng Ma" input method. After this, the court asked Microsoft to stop selling products that include Zhongyi's typefaces.
However, the court ordered no compensation.

In my opinion Microsoft has to respect the intellectual property rights just like all the other companies. If the intellectual property rights are not respected there will be a lot of chaos about this subject. According to me a creator has the right to choose if they keep their idea to themselves and if they want to sell that right they are allowed to do that.

Sources: http://www.chinatechnews.com/2009/11/18/11052-microsoft-found-guilty-of-character-input-copyright-infringement-in-china

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es5xRYWPjWI

Intellectual property

Yesterday, we have discussed unit 11 in class. This unit is about intellectual property.
Intellectual property can be defined as a number of distinct types of legal monopolies over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law.

Intellectual property law has primary rights, such as Copyright, Patent, trade mark,…
Copyright is an exclusive right granted to authors of creative works to control the use of their original works. Also the patent is an exclusive right but it is granted by a government to an inventor which prevents others from making, using or selling his or her invention.
A trade mark is a distinctive registered mark used by a business to identify itself and its products or services to consumers.

According to me, this was the most interesting unit of all. In class, there was the example of the movie: The Da Vinci Code. This movie is an infringement of copyright. The authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” claimed that the publishing company of The Da Vinci Code stole the ending of there book. Dan Brown was a witness to this case. The defendant, the publishing company, won because there was no textual coping of the book “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”.

This was my last blog, I hope that you have enjoyed reading my blogs!

Source: Handbook International Legal English,5th printing, Krois-Linder and Trans-legal, p. 148

House prices are still rising

House prices are rising on an annual basis for the first time in nearly two years.

The annual growth rate is two per cent, the first increase since March 2008. Martin Gahbauer, chief economist, said that confidence is the reason why the property market is showing signs of cooling. The 0.4 per cent increase is the slowest since May. He also mentioned that the market needs a boost. The very strong monthly increases during the summer were unlikely to be sustainable over long term.

The prices are nearly 5 per cent higher than at the start of the year 2009 when almost every City real estate office was predicting a plunge. The experts are stunned to see the record low interest rates. They are still 13 per cent below the levels seen in October 2007.

There were sings that more people were putting their home on the market nationwide which could depress house price growth. Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents said: “As sellers come on to the market we may see a leveling out of house prices, but we will also see a far firmer foundation for a real market recovery”.

I think that the real estate prices are way to high. At least here where I live, at the coast, the prices are mountainous. It’s very difficult to buy a house or even rent a house at an acceptable price. The prices are just unthinkable. Now the prices are slowly decreasing, which is absolutely necessary. The increases during the summer were indeed unlikely to be sustainable over long term. We have seen the situation in America. People could buy a house for a low acceptable price and they took a loan for that. When they had financial troubles to pay off the loan, they put a mortgage on their house. They could also have a second mortgage on the same house. And then began the troubles, we all have seen the result of that I may say.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/2706585/House-prices-up-year-on-year.html

The families who own London

Some people just have it all. For example, Gerald Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster, Britain’s third richest man and its richest property developer. He has 100 acres of Mayfair and 200 acres of Belgravia. This makes him the capital’s biggest landlord. He sent his children to the local village primary school, does not care much for dining out and is proud of having worked his way up through the ranks to become head of the Territorial Army.

Gerald Grosvenor, now 54 years old, is one of the four elite families who, together, control some of London’s finest addresses. The real estates of Grosvenor and the other three elite families were established centuries ago, through wise purchases and canny marriages. This is very unique. There aren’t other cities that look like London, owned by single large families.

But some people think, by moving with the times, owners of the most expensive real estate are adding to their fortunes. This is something that bothers a lot of people.

What do I think about people who are that rich? I really think I must be unbelievable to have real property and personal property, worth a couple of milliards. Real property is a general term for land, tenements and hereditaments. Personal property refers everything which does not fall under the heading of real property. But being jealous is not the kind of feeling I had when I read this article. It’s important in life I think, that you can wish for something, that there is a kind of a desire in your life. Having a lot of money doesn’t mean you’re happy. However money is imortant!

source:

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article610805.ece

compensation for coastal erosion

My last blog is about real property law. Some people live alongside the coastline, but due to climatical changes, there is coastal erosion. Those people can’t live there anymore, and if they want to sell their houses they get a low price for it.

The chairman of the Environment Agency Lord Smith has a solution for this problem. He has unveiled a radical plan to help hundreds of homeowners threatened by coastal erosion. Especially the coastlines of Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire have been particularly vulnerable to the sea with many losing their homes without receiving compensation.

The plan is to buy up their houses threatened by the see and then leases them back. The houses would be sold to the local authority, then lease it back so they could carry on living in it until such time as erosion actually takes the home away. The homes would be bought at the original market value.

Because of this plan these people would be able to move and find somewhere else to live. But it isn’t as simple as it looks like. The amount of money required is very small compared with the national budget. He is now pressing the government to take his proposal. He is now trying to press the government to take up his proposal.

According to me it is right and proper that there should be a financial assistance to people who are dealing with coastal erosion. Those people are stranded in this situation and can’t help it.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/8349439.stm

B.C. October real estate sales highest for the month in six years

I found an article about real estate, which explains the increase of real estate sales. In October, the sales were the highest for the month in six years.

The article says that realtors cleared that there were around 8.600 sales, so it increases with 115 percent compared to the same month a year ago.
44 Percent of all those sales, around 3.700 sales, were in the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s territory. That number represents a 171 percent increase from October 2008.
It was a similar situation in the Fraser Valley, where 1,583 sales in October represented a 120-per-cent increase from the same month a year ago.
Camerion Muir, who is the B.C. Real Estate Association’s chief economist, said that the recession is playing a huge impact in this case.
But he expects that the South Coast markets will not maintain the pace of sales that have been seen over the past several months.
The sales in those markets are driven by a high demand of buyers from last fall and who are now being drawn in by the current interest rates.
Also the home price went up with 17 percent and was in October $493.328. But now the home prices are more expensive.
The conclusion is that British Columbians racked up the highest number of real estate sales for the month October since 2003.

My opinion is that however they have accomplished the highest real estate sales, that isn’t enough for this market. It’s better that the market stays stable, I mean no increases or decreases. Now, in October, the real estate sales increases, but the next couples of months it can also decrease more and so you can speak of a big loss in this market.

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/October+real+estate+sales+highest+that+month+years/2232990/story.html

Real Estate industry cheers tax credit extension

What's real estate law? Real estate's a legal term that encompasses land along with improvements to the land.
Real estate law's the body of regulations and legal codes which apply to such matters under a particular jurisdiction and include things such as commercial and residential real property transactions. Real estate's often considered synonymous with real property and in contrast with personal property.
I’ve read an article on www.dailyadvance.com about selling houses. It’s about a home credit law that’s recently signed by president Obama.
In America, It’s a good time for people who like to buy their first house. That’s because the federal home buyer credit, which gives people who buy a first home a credit of $ 8,000, has been extended by legislation. This law is recently signed by president Obama. According to Diane Garder, a real estate agent, it’s now a good time for first home buyers to consider buying a house. From 22 August to 15 November 2009, 44,847 taxpayers in North California have already filed for a tax credit. In America, 1.4 million taxpayers have already signed in.
Now, there’s a second group that can use the tax credit. Long-time home owners can also receive a credit on the purchase of a new home that replaces their principal residence.
Secondly, there has been made another change. People, who make more money, can also apply to this credit because the income limit is increased.
What’s my own opinion about this? I think this is a rather good initiative. Since the crisis, it has become more difficult to sell houses. This initiative will make it easer to consider buying a house instead of renting a house so they can save a part of their money. I have to say that’s not a solution because renting is more expensive than buying. If you buy a house, your monthly payment will make sure that you become owner of your house on the long term. If you rent a house, it’s easy to say that you’re throwing your money away. In that case, that money has no result for you. It’s best to buy a house if you want to live in that house for a long time.

Source: http://www.dailyadvance.com/news/real-estate-industry-cheers-tax-credit-extension-957428.html

Unpaid interns earn their rights

The more work you do as an intern, the more likely that your employer will have to pay you.

A graduate interning at a fashion PR company was recently told by her supervisor that all the interns in the company photocopy and stuff envelopes and if they don’t like it, then they must quit. They may not even use the sugar for in the tea or coffee, the explanation for that is ridiculous. It’s because the sugar is for the staff and the clients.

Interns Anonymous, a website set up by two graduates where interns can share their experiences (good and bad). Most interns don’t understand why they don’t get paid for their work that they do during the internship. Employers are more than willing to take on graduates to work for them for free. Unpaid work experience is part of boosting your CV, but the turning point comes when they become the equivalent of a full-time job that they are doing for nothing.

Rosy Rickett, one of the founders of Interns Anonymous, says: ‘My friends and I always assumed that an internship was a necessary but useful step to gaining work. But when we started them, we questioned how useful they really were.’ One friend did an internship at a major commercial art gallery where employers had been fired and replaced with five unpaid interns instead. Interns don’t get contracts and don’t have the same rights as the staff. However, the more work an intern does for the employer, the more likely the employer will have to pay them.

Graduates really want to learn, to gain experience so that they have a chance when they want to apply for a paid job, but they risk losing a good reference that could help them on their way once the internship is over when they complain.

Phil Willis, MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, estimates that interns do 18 000 hours of unpaid work weekly.

I think that it’s really important for graduates to do an internship, but they must get a minimum wage. As you can see, many employers use graduates to replace staff members who they have fired. That is unfair and not done. Graduates work really hard during their internship because they want to prove themselves. It is important to have a good reference when you apply for a job so they work hard, but they should get a minimum wage in return.

Daphné V.E.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/nov/14/graduates-interns-unpaid-employment-rights