Category: Intellectual Property

from the Straight-to-the-source dept.
Senior Associate John Gilmore calls our attention to an item on the movement to create an open public library of scientific papers that appeared on the New Scientist website.

A model archive, called "PubMed Central", was set up by Harold Varmus when he was director of the US National Institutes of Health. Major journals which already deposit their papers there include the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the British Medical Journal. Supporters of the idea urge other scientists to sign a petition calling for the library, and to boycott journals unwilling to participate in the scheme.

As of the end of March, more than 12,000 scientists from 120 countries have signed an open letter in support of the Public Library of Science initiative. As a result of this initiative, several scientific publishers have already decided to adopt the policy advocated in the open letter, and almost every publisher and scientific society is discussing it. You can find out more, and add your signature to the petition, at http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org.

from the what's-obvious? dept.

A federal appeals court declared that "BN has mounted a substantial challenge to the validity of the patent in the suit." The case has been sent back for further proceedings. The Internet E-Newsarticle is discussed on Slashdot, where "Artagel" gave a link to the court decision. Cases like this are defining what can be turned into intellectual property.

from the reform-through-online-coordination dept.
Senior Associates Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly, along with Charles Cella, have a new project: "BountyQuest is the world's first high-stakes knowledge marketplace, on a mission to strengthen the patent system. We pay large cash rewards to people who can help find evidence critical to issues of patent validity. BountyQuest revolutionizes information searches by connecting the experts who have the information with the people who need it through our "Broadcast Reward System·" Simply put, BountyQuest offers monetary rewards for hard-to-find information. We support an on-line community of scientists, engineers, and professional researchers who have valuable knowledge that can help their field, their industry, and the world community. BountyQuest's first mission is to reform the patent system by providing the prior art searches required to insure that only true innovators have patents." Thanks to Bennett Smith for this pointer.