Cleese on Creativity
In a talk on Creativity (from 1991, it seems), complete with Danish subtitling to help expand your language competency, John Cleese talks about “open” and “closed” modes of operating, and the need to...
View ArticleOn Deliberately Weak IP Rhetorics
I mentioned Boldrin and Levine’s argument against patents. Their paper (it is posted but labeled a draft) is very uneven, moving between dubious assertions and insightful analysis. Lurking over their...
View ArticleRight More Often Than Wrong
John Gruber writes Daring Fireball, one of the best blogs on technology management, innovation, and business, generally from an Apple baseline. I like how he selects from the news of the day, pulls a...
View ArticleWhen the pseudo-Bayh-Dole prophecy fails
In 1956, Leon Festinger and others published an account of a group in Chicago that believed that the world was about to be destroyed by a flood, but that those who took the appropriate actions would be...
View ArticleThe rise of “employee” as a means to pervert university IP policy
We live in a society dominated by the public stock corporation and the manner in which it engages work. It has only been since the late 19th century that the public stock corporation has come to have...
View ArticlePrincipalities of Patenting
I am working through the ways in which a university comes to acquire patent rights from faculty inventors. This is turning into a series of articles. This stuff isn’t easy–but then, as far as I can...
View ArticleThe Casino Factor
We have been working through how a university might come to acquire patent rights from its faculty. I’ve discussed the problems in the dual monopoly system–comprehensive, compulsory assignment of a...
View ArticleCompel them to come in
The Christian religion became political when Constantine decriminalized Christianity (313) and Theodorus later made it the state religion (380). At that point, the ad hoc development of beliefs and...
View ArticleThe Purpose of the Patent System for University Research
There is a general argument that the patent is a pretty useful cultural tool to stimulate and reward technological innovation. The owner of a patent has the right to exclude others from practicing...
View ArticleScience at the Frontier and the Effect of the Linear Model
In Science the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush proposed federal funding to universities to expand the frontiers of science. Folks these days focus on the science part of Bush’s proposal and his...
View Article