2007-05-06 International Patent System Yearly Review

The WIPO just published the 2006 yearly review of the international patent system. Don't expect any new statement regarding patents. It's just a statistical report… but there is one of the interesting comment in the report is the following : Between 2002 and 2006, the workload of the International Bureau increased by 26.6% while the number of personnel processing international applications decreased by 11%.

With 376 employee (as stated in their report), the personnel of WIPO is in charge of …processing, translating and publishing PCT international applications.

The International Bureau of the WIPO has different tasks to perform as stated in the convention establishing the WIPO. The function as described in the convention (Article 4 - Functions) but it's very broad. My main question is if the International Bureau of the WIPO is reviewing the patents processed, translated and published at an international level. It looks like that their work is limited to a simple administrative task.

In the general process of the patent system, it's still a single entity doing the reviewing of the patents in Europe. The yearly review is not including the patent rejection rate as it's not the role of WIPO. There are some statistics on the EPO website about the opposed patent (by a third party when published ?) and the granted patent. But where are the numbers of granted patents versus non-granted patents ? When the reviewing takes place, there are rejection of patents ? I should miss a column somewhere.

Tags: patent wipo epo freesoftware copyright

2007-05-17 Reducing Legal Complexity

When you are doing something you sometimes don't know that you are doing it.. just like Mister Jourdain1. We made GooDiff it was just for monitoring some policies of web service provider on the Internet. But when we read the recent comment from Alex Schroeder : GooDiff helps navigate the byzantine labyrinth, but I’m still hoping for somebody to tear it down in the first place. He is right : monitoring the legal changes on service providers' web site is just a small part for understanding and managing the legal complexity. We must act to reduce the overall legal complexity of those policies published by the services provider. Michael and I have the idea to extend a little bit the GooDiff scope to propose simplified and generalized legal policies.

The idea is not new : Creative Commons is doing the same regarding licensing of copyrighted works for sometimes ago. The main issue I have with the Creative Commons is the drifting from generalized license (some free and some non-free license) to localized licenses. The idea of a generalized and worldwide accepted license is better as you don't have to focus on the national detail of the law. The GNU General Public License is a success with a globally accepted free software license without moving to the glory detail of the national laws. We could start a simple to read privacy policy with two or three alternatives for the service providers. We should try to help a little bit to improve the understanding of the legal framework for the citizen without the help of a lawyer. The major issue is to come with a privacy policy valid for the vast majority of countries… but that worths a try.

Tags: goodiff copyright eula legal complexity policies

geo: Les Bulles, Chiny

2007-05-19 Belgian Election

Federal election in Belgium will take place the Sunday 10 June. I was wondering what is the different political programs of each political party and their vision of our future society. I was a bit disappointed to see how large and vague the political concepts are in their programs. Political parties don't take risk to improve our society, they are just giving a nice and global vision to catch the maximum of people. They give an impression that nothing can't be easily enhanced in our societies…

Looking at the colorful advertisement of the political candidate in the street, I was wondering what we can improve in our societies (just in my eyes)… The idea is to share the ideas among the Belgian citizen and maybe propose some of them to our political representatives.

• The incorporation of an article in the Belgian constitution to promote non-violence and promote world peace (to avoid Belgium contributing to conflicts outside Belgium). Something like the famous Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution would an interesting improvement.
• The removal from the 2001/29/CE directive and its Belgian transposition of the famous article "Technical Protection Measures". The protection of technical measure has nothing to do with the authors' rights.
• Proposing a directive or an update to the authors' rights in Belgium to limit the number of orphan works. Something like if the works is not actively exploited in period of 20 years after its first publication, the work is loosing his protection and will become part of the commons.
• Limiting the validity of the authors' rights (copyright) to 20 years after its first publication. That would need a change in the international treaties but would have at least the advantage to counter balance the current proposal of extension by the big editors for 90 years after the death of the author. Maybe 20 years after its first publication won't be reached but at least it'll bring some competition against the current never-ending extension.
• Merging the current dual-circuit (libre and public) education system into one to limit the cost of education and improve the current system. I know this one will be difficult in Belgium… but why not ?
• Merging the "Communauté Française" and "Region Wallone" in one structure like the flemish part of Belgium already made some years ago.
• Moving the "drug policies" from a criminal matter to a public health matter. Reaching a controlled production system instead of the current black market. Where the money generated from the revenue can be used for the public health awareness.
• Stopping the current use of electronic voting system and keep the simple paper voting approach. The current budget for the electronic voting could be used to improve the current paper voting process.

The list is clearly not exhaustive but if at least two propositions could be taken out by a political group. I would be very happy. I know I'm an idealist and worst, I'm Belgian…

Tags: blog idealist copyright politics belgium society

geo: Les Bulles, Chiny

2007-05-22 History of Electronic Music

I just finished the reading Modulations, une histoire de la musique électronique (a translation of the English version A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. The book itself is interesting and show the patchwork of the electronic music and its foundation. The book is written in a collaborative way as each chapter is written by a different author. Thinking back of the still young electronic movement, it's difficult to draw any conclusion as we are still in the dynamic and we will continue to be in. The book remembers me the freedom in electronic music and the going forward approach. It was maybe the first contact for me of a real social network where people share different musical approaches, different way to listen or to enjoy the music, to mix it or (re)create it. In the book, there is a nice quote of Bill Laswell, here is the French version of the quote (I'm looking for the original one) :

Nous n'allons pas découvrir un son totalement nouveau, une note parfaitement inconnue auparavant, ni rien de semblable. La découverte se fait en combinant des éléments; deux éléments réunis en font un troisième, et tous ces éléments différents concourent à la création de quelque chose de nouveau. Je pense que la seule façon de parvenir à quelque chose d'un tant soit peu différent est de se mettre dès à présent à combiner les choses entre elles.

That's a clear explanation of the creation process where you need the existing elements to build new and unknown elements. Unknown elements require part of the existing elements from our world. Innovation in electronic music is a matter of sharing, mixing, combining those known elements in something new. It's part of the creative process and building new boundaries to avoid the combination of the existing is dangerous for creativity and innovation. I just remember those days where we were all together sharing intense moment while just listening to monotonous beats.

Tags: blog freedom music electronicmusic sharing book

geo: Les Bulles, Chiny

2007-05-27 Java vs Python

I don't like to feed useless discussion about comparison in computer science. But I found this one to be very funny, it's just an except of the documentation in Java and in Python about "the simple" rename function.

The Java version :

renameTo(File dest) Hide

Renames the file denoted by this abstract pathname.

Many aspects of the behavior of this method are inherently platform-dependent: The rename operation might not be 
able to move a file from one filesystem to another, it might not be atomic, and it might not succeed if a file 
with the destination abstract pathname already exists. The return value should always be checked to make sure 
that the rename operation was successful.
dest	

The new abstract pathname for the named file
return	

true if and only if the renaming succeeded; false otherwise
Throws	SecurityException:

If a security manager exists and its checkWrite(java.lang.String)

method denies write access to either the old or new pathnames
Throws	NullPointerException:

If parameter dest is null

and the Python version :

rename(src, dst)
    Rename the file or directory src to dst. If dst is a directory, OSError will be raised. 
On Unix, if dst exists and is a file, it will be removed silently if the user has permission. 
The operation may fail on some Unix flavors if src and dst are on different filesystems. 
If successful, the renaming will be an atomic operation (this is a POSIX requirement). 
On Windows, if dst already exists, OSError will be raised even if it is a file; there may be no way to 
implement an atomic rename when dst names an existing file. Availability: Macintosh, Unix, Windows.

When you are writing programs, you are expecting a clear documentation of the behavior from the functions used. What do you think ? Will you choose Java or Python ?

Tags: blog cs python java computerlanguage documentation

geo: Les Bulles, Chiny