Matt Yglesias has a nice blog piece on the cost of extending copyrights, adding a wrinkle of his own link here.

He writes in response to PETER DECHENEY's piece which provides details on US trade agreements and legislation that extend copyright to foreign copyrighted works that had not previously been covered as they were in the public domain and the period of copyright by another 20 years link here. Yglesias point was a simple one: that so much of what is produced in the arts is derivative (i.e., it has a hard time being anything else), covering more and more works with copyright greatly complicates and raises the cost of producing new works you have to get "rights" or permission at cost in both time and money.

Validation for his point can be found in the many works that have not been produced like plays as the cost of getting the rights proved impossible to cover.

A day later, Robert Barnes goes into the same subject link here. And with lots of examples of the rise in the cost of producing or performing such derivative works. "Orchestras used to be able [to buy the score to] the Prokofiev symphony for $100, he said, and play it until the sheet music was worn out. Now it must be rented, at a cost of several hundred dollars for each performance.

Thus, copyright meant to encourage innovation does exactly the opposite.

Via Ed Lopez (somewhat tardily, sorry, Ed): Botas Picudas Mexicanas y Tribal

This Friday, Sept. 23, at 6pm Easter time, I'll be teaching a Mises Academy Webinar discussing the America Invents Act, signed into law last Friday by President Obama. I discuss this webinar in a Mises Daily article today: Obama's Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?.

In the webinar, I will:

1. summarize the basic problem with patent law from a free-market perspective;
2. present a series of real patent reforms that could make significant improvement in patent law (short of abolition);
3. explain and critique the relevant changes made by the America Invents Act;
4. briefly summarize other imminent IP legislation and treaties on the horizon; and
5. respond to questions from attendees.

As both proponents and opponents of patent law recognize, these issues are of crucial importance for innovation and our economy. If you are interested in learning about the current direction of patent policy, you may find this class of interest.

The blogosphere is rightfully abuzz over the recent paper by Bessen, Meurer and Ford. They are extremely careful researchers. They focus on litigation over software patents and measure losses to the victims of patent lawsuits and gains to the trolls who bring them by looking at changes in stock market valuations. They find the net loss to the economy from these lawsuits running at about $80 billion per year. They conclude

that the loss of billions of dollars of wealth associated with these lawsuits harms society. While the lawsuits increase incentives to acquire vague, over-reaching patents, they decrease incentives for real innovation overall

Patents: your government discouraging innovation.

Dean Baker takes issue with a Washington Post story link here on doctors shilling for drugs and drug companies paying them big money to push greater use of their drug including for uses prohibited by FDA link here.

The Post article is a routine description ("fair and balanced" as the big papers like to claim) leading to the fact that the doctors are well-paid for what amounts to treating patients while never seeing them. In some cases they push uses that are criminal, as when they recommend or prescribe a drug for unapproved use.

Baker's problem with the Post piece is its failure to recognize the central role of drug patents in this business. Without the patent, the drugcos couldn't charge the prices that make the big marketing payoffs and their huge profits possible.

Baker fails to note that this might just have something to do with the high cost of health care in the US (highest in the world) or the funding to pay campaign funds to crucial legislators to leave the system unfixed.

How sill can patents get? This silly:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/09/13/GameShow.pdf [PDF link]

Thanks to CourtHouseNews.com for reporting this.

Apparently the Game Show Network felt it could just steal another company's property by having a computer match, rank and distribute awards to competing contestants based on their relative skill levels. They obviously need to pay dearly for this moral outrage...

More on the specific patent that the U.S. Patent office deemed worthy enough for a monopoly here:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=9ysFAAAAEBAJ&printsec;=frontcover&dq;=6,174,237&hl;=en&ei;=NXxvTvDyEOzOiAKYiIG4Bw&sa;=X&oi;=book_result&ct;=result&resnum;=1&ved;=0CC0Q6AEwAA

John Bergmayer has a very nice piece on Project Gutenberg link here written on the occasion of the death of its founder, Michael Hart, "who passed away this week, after founding the project by typing in a copy of the Declaration of Independence in 1971. In doing this, Hart invented the ebook, and what became Project Gutenberg release #1 is still available online."

I had not realized that such a fundamental invention had been around that long. It gives me hope, given that some things in IP have gone right, we may hope for more despite the evidence to the contrary.

Bergmayer repeats Hart's fundamental realization about his project. To preserve creations, they need to be endlessly repeated so that there will be lots of copies (unlimited?) for future generations to be able to access and to preserve them from technological change that is already limiting access to some material that cannot be read by the latest computer software. Thus, they need to be kept in a simple and widely accessible form, such as plain text rather than as a PDF.

Andrew Pollack reports that "Myriad Genetics retained its monopoly on a lucrative genetic test for breast cancer risk when a federal appeals court recently upheld the company's patents on two human genes and the validity of gene patents in general." It seems to me that this is so wrong as to defy any rational explanation link here.

Remembering that the constitutional basis for patents is that they encourage innovation, the patent is here granted on the wrong thing. A gene is not invented or developed. It is not a creation of human ingenuity. The patent should not be on the gene but on the process or procedure to identify it. The Appeals Court ruling pretty clearly identifies the gene as patentable, apparently because the procedure has transformed it. The finding is buried in 105 pages of opinion link here .

Worst result: Gene patents have in general been upheld. Let's hope the Supremes to overturn it.

I missed one IP story in this issue of The Economist. Louboutin is suing Yves Saint Laurent for infringing it trademark by producing high-end women's shoes with red soles link here.

The extremes of IP law keep getting nuttier and nuttier. What shade of red is it trying to copyright? Would pink cross the line? How about reddish purple? Anyway, sue and YSL may just fold its tent and go away.