Australian Technology and IP Business

IP and Free Trade

IP Australia has published a new fact sheet that examines the impact of the Australia - United States Free Trade Agreement on Intellectual Property.

It is fairly superficial but is worth reading to see the broad scope of the changes.

Competitive Intelligence

There is much information on the world wide web that is in databases not accessible by search engines.

This article from LLRX is designed to give you the resources you need to better understand the history of "deep web research", as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the "deep web".

Remix

On the theme of remix, via Seth's Blog comes these examples.

Lockdown your domain name

A business's domain name is an important asset.

This story from Internet Week (via LawTech Guru) records the domain hijacking of panix.com by someone using the MelbourneIT registry. It resulted in a major outage for its 5000 customers.

The article emphasizes the need to tell your registrar to lock down your domain name so that other registrars cannot initiate a transfer without your involvement.

Want to know who is recorded as the owner of an Australian domain name? See Whois AusRegistry.

Top 25 Innovations

CNN has published its top 25 innovations of the past quarter century.

The list was decided by a panel of technology leaders assembled by the Lemelson-MIT Program.

In creating the list, the group hoped to single out "25 non-medically related technological innovations that have become widely used since 1980, are readily recognizable by most Americans, have had a direct and perceptible impact on our everyday lives, and/or could dramatically affect our lives in the future."

The top 5 (I won't give away whether they're in order or not) are the internet,  mobile phone, personal computers, fiber optics , email .

Creative Commons and Open Content Licensing Day 2

First Session was a panel on Government and Public Institutions approach to open content licensing.
What became clear was that there was no taxonomy or system for government to assess its copyright holdings (as proposed by Terry Cutler) so that it could not even determine what it should make available for access (whether free or paid) to encourage creativity and innovation. Discussion revealed that the Queensland Government at least is reviewing its default position that if it contracts for work then it gets the copyright to one that is negotiable, case by case. There was some discussion from Copyright Agency about whether government should get copyright from creators in return for grants. Examples of practical implementation such as online teaching and research, digitisation of art collections and filmmakers were discussed.

It became clear that government policy on copyright ownership was ambiguous.

The session concluded by noting again that Creative Commons was not an economic model but a driver for access to copyright material.

The second and last session presented 2 case studies: Aesharenet (an example of licensing in the education sector) and Open Digital Rights Language, which started discussion about the role of DRM in open content.

The conference closed on the note that much policy work needs to be done. Perhaps Queensland can be a leader!

Creative Commons and Open Content Licensing

I was attracted to the Conference by the promise of hearing Professor Lawrence Lessig but by the end of Day 1 my head was spinning.

Here is my snapshot (I am responsible for errors or omissions).

Justice Ronald Sackville of the Federal Court of Australia gave the welcome address: He noted that Australia's copyright term was now the same as USA's (ie 70 years from the author's death) as a result of the passage of the US FREE TRADE AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT 2004. He also noted that criminal penalties of up to 5 years could now be imposed summarily for conspiring to breach copyright. He gave a brief explanation of the forces behind copyright law (economic intersts, international treaty obligations, technological changes) and refrred briefly to limits on copyright law eg competition law.

Professor Brian Fitzgerald of QUT  introduced the theme of allowing access to and reusing of work (sharing/collaborating) by controlling its downstream use (but not giving away rights). He gave the backbround to the iCommons project in Australia.

Professor Lawrence Lessig gave an inspiring  presentation  ranging from free culture to creative commons and copyright to DRM technology with great use of multimedia.

It was in question time that a theme for the day arose: what was in Creative Commons for struggling artists (earning less than AUD$14,000 a year)?

After the first break, Neeru Paharia from Creative Commons San Francisco explained the CC licence and gave a rundown on its practical uses.

Ian Oi from Blakes gave a legal view on the Australian licence. Discussion ensued about moral rights and indigenous issues (repeated later in the day).

After lunch Richard Neville chaired a panel (filmmaker, composer/administrator, business services) on the creative industry's views. Richard Jones said filmmakers were generally sceptical of Creative Commons and were particularly concerned about the use that was made of their work (query whether text and multimedia creators react differently particularly since filmmakers are forced to assign their rights to get the film produced and have to deal with other complex issues?)

Judge Sackville observed that since Creative Commons is voluntary, people should not read too much into it for the future of copyright.

(Someone) commented that CC helps people think about what they are giving away and why?

In the final session John Quiggin introduced a panel on 2 different projects by discussing networking and social capital: one case study is actually running (ACRO) and the other is still being researched (Youth Internet Radio Network) but represented by 2 enthusiastic developers including one who enthused about disruptive technology.

A fascinating day!!

Answers

Via Inter Alia, I've found answers.com.

It isn't a search engine in the normal sense which just provides links.

It does actually give free answers drawn on a range of encyclopaedic sources.

It looks accurate enough and helpful enough to add to my main page on a test basis.

Creating a business-lawyer tech partnership

Laura Owen, the director, worldwide legal services, at Cisco Systems Inc. has written a thought provoking article to start the year on how businesses could get more out of their external lawyers.

The Tech Evolution: Change or Die(via Strategic Legal Technology and Dennis Kennedy) challenges lawyers by listing 9 things they can do to help their clients be more productive.
The suggestions range from setting up systems for routine document production to creating consortia to develop new solutions.

"In one example, five companies with global operations have joined together with a U.K.-based law firm to develop e-learning programs for managers, to provide training about employment laws in various countries. The content is provided by the law firm, which then gets the training module and application developed by the participating companies to market to its other clients -- and the companies get the training."

The challenge for clients is to work with their lawyers in partnership so that the lawyers can see the long term benefit of such an approach.