Copyright in the digital environment

This submission briefly reviews the dearth of empirical evidence that copyright policy is either effective or efficient. It then focuses on consumer rights, how these are unnecessarily undermined by copyright policy, and how this lack of balance between producer and consumer rights is radically worsened in a digital environment with legislated monopoly privileges. A poor consumer environment will impede the development of a flourishing digital sector. A range of specific issues are discussed briefly: double-dipping through technological protection measures (TPMs), the right for communities to access cultural material sold using copyright privileges, the excessive strength of copyright privileges, compliance costs and the proportionality of penalties

Introducing Inventiveness into the Patent System: Submission to the Review of the National Innovation System

Because of the potential impact of the patent system on innovation diffusion, particularly on continuous and/or incremental innovation, patent policy should be of central importance to the review of the national innovation system. Substantial empirical evidence shows that most industrial innovations are not induced by the patent system. Even in very large markets, such as the USA, only a minority of patents are likely to be induced by the patent system. To the extent that patents do induce innovations, it is the inventiveness of the innovation which gives rise to possible social benefits (externalities, mainly in the form of knowledge spillovers) which may offset the costs of a patent system and thus give rise to a net economic benefit. On the basis of this evidence about the inducement effect of the patent system, and evidence on the current very low inventiveness standard for patent grant, policy proposals are put forward to re-introduce inventiveness into the patent system, thus making it potentially welfare-enhancing. These proposed changes would also have a major impact in ameliorating the negative impact of the patent system on continuous/incremental innovation

Prisoners’ gang-related activity: the importance of bullying and moral disengagement

Gang-related activity can have a significant impact on the effective management of prisons in the UK, yet little is known about the characteristics of the prisoners involved. I it this study, 141 adult male prisoners' gang-related activity was examined in relation to their bullying behaviour and use of moral disengagement. Results showed that prisoners most involved in gang-related activity were likely to have spent a longer total time in the prison system, be perpetrators of bullying and have high levels of moral disengagement. Findings also show that moral disengagement partially mediates the relationship between bullying and gang-related activity Implications for treatment programmes and the prison estate are discussed

Kepstrum approach to real-time speech-enhancement methods using two microphones

The objective of this paper is to provide improved real-time noise canceling performance by using kepstrum analysis. The method is applied to typically existing two-microphone approaches using modified adaptive noise canceling and speech beamforming methods. It will be shown that the kepstrum approach gives an improved effect for optimally enhancing a speech signal in the primary input when it is applied to the front-end of a beamformer or speech directivity system. As a result, enhanced performance in the form of an improved noise reduction ratio with highly reduced adaptive filter size can be achieved. Experiments according to 20cm broadside microphone configuration are implemented in real-time in a real environment, which is a typical indoor office with a moderate reverberation condition

An inventive step for the patent system?

The inventive step is the critical variable in determining balance between patent costs and patent benefits. Set at the right level it ensures that the knowledge spillovers from new inventions offset the costs of restraining competition. But asking the question "is it obvious?" sets a far lower standard for patent grant than asking "is it inventive?" The author argues that for benefits to offset costs the minimum standard of inventiveness must be a contribution to new knowledge. Without such new knowledge there can be no benefits to justify the cost of the restraint on competition.Copyright Information: Author holds the copyright of the work (From author's email of 3/01/2013

Trade treaties and patent policy: searching for a balanced approach

Patents were originally designed to encourage technological innovation, which would not otherwise occur, and which create spillover benefits. Careful design is needed to ensure patents do not provide windfall benefits to inventions which would take place absent patents. Further, for the grant of a patent to be economically rational the patented invention must have a reasonable probability of providing spillover (dynamic growth) benefits that exceed monopoly (static inefficiency) losses. This paper draws on the substantial empirical research on industrial innovation and how patent systems work in practice to develop a first-best set of policy parameters for a balanced (parsimonious) patent system. That is, it attempts to design a set of parameters which maximise dynamic growth benefits while minimising static efficiency losses, thus complying with TRIPS Article 7. These parameters are compared with TRIPS and with the TRIPS-Plus elements which the USA is seeking from bi-lateral and regional trade treaties. The resulting schema allows a clearer view of the cost of patent policy provisions in "trade" treaties

A question of balance

Because the patent system may do substantial harm as well as possible good, balance between the innovation inducement effect and the competition reduction effect has always been important. It has less often been recognised that the patent system attracts the kind of ‘gaming’ behaviour that has been rife in tax policy (Section 1). The current review of patentable subject matter provides the opportunity to return the patent system to the narrow realm in which it belongs—where there is likely to be a benefit to the public. This would be consistent with current empirical evidence—that patents are important in inducing innovation only where technology is highly codified or where the initial investment is very large compared to market size (Section 2). Establishing the boundaries of actual patent policy is challenging, but it can be assumed that the government’s intent is that the overall system not be welfare-reducing. This means that there must be a reasonable consideration in exchange for the monopoly—patent monopolies should not be lightly granted. There has never been any government decision to extend the boundaries of patentable subject matter to new fields such as software, discoveries or methods of medical treatment. These major competition and innovation policy decisions have been made within the patent administration system (Section 3). There is clearly a major gap between patent policy and the actual outcomes as delivered by the patent administration system. These gaps are explored in Section 4, where a series of legal decisions and legal doctrines are considered from an economic viewpoint. The gulf between policy and practice suggests the need for: serious attention to ‘gaming’ behaviour, including ‘anti-avoidance’ provisions and penalties for undermining the patent system; a need to redress the way in which the patent playing field is so substantially sloped in favour of the patent applicant that many uninventive ‘inventions’ are being granted patents: a need for a multi-faceted team to address the gaps between patent policy and practice to design a robust system that will operate to enhance national economic well-being and be resistant to ‘gaming’ behaviour. Besides addressing ‘gaming’ behaviour and the bias against the public interest, this could include: substantially increasing the inventiveness threshold; requiring claims clarity from the point of application/grant; and compensating losers, possibly by limiting the monopoly grant to the prevention of copying; a need for regular evaluation of the patent system overall, and of legal decisions that impact on patent policy in particular; and a need for the collection of proper economic data on the impact of the patent system, including: provision of advice to the patent office whenever a monopoly right is exercised; collection of data through the National Innovation Survey to identify the impact of patents on innocent innovators, and estimate the proportion of innovations induced by the patent system