Daniel Nazer's blog

On August 30, 2016, the Patent Office issued U.S. Patent No. 9,430,468, titled; “Online peer review and method.” The owner of this patent is none other than Elsevier, the giant academic publisher. When it first applied for the patent, Elsevier sought very broad claims that could have covered a wide range of online peer review. Fortunately, by the time the patent actually issued, its claims had been narrowed significantly. So, as a practical matter, the patent will be difficult to enforce. Read more about Stupid Patent of the Month: Elsevier Patents Online Peer Review

Cross-posted from EFF. Read more about Ninth Circuit Rules That Celebrity "Rights" Trump Free Speech

Patent trolls — companies that assert patents as a business model instead of creating products — have been in the news lately. This is hardly surprising, given that troll lawsuits now make up the majority of new patent cases. And the litigation is only the tip of the iceberg: patent trolls send out hundreds of demand letters for each suit filed in court. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we have been following this issue closely and are working hard to bring reform to fix the patent mess. Read more about Trolls and Tribulations

Last week's decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust -- upholding the Mass Digitization Project (MPD) -- was a big victory for fair use. The MDP is a project where university libraries and Google have together digitized over 10 million books to allow for full-text searches, preservation, and access for people with print disabilities. When the Authors Guild sued for copyright infringement, HathiTrust defended the suit by arguing that the MDP is fair use.

Judge Baer upheld the MDP. His decision recognizes that the project is a massive public good: it is a tool for scholarship, prevents the loss of our cultural heritage, and provides unparalleled access for the visually impaired. Significantly, he found that these educational purposes are "transformational" in a way that supports fair use. Read more about Fair Use Prospers on Campus

The Australian government has proposed sweeping changes to its surveillance and national security laws. The government’s wish list includes mandatory data retention, surveillance of social networks, criminalization of encryption, and lower thresholds for warrants. As it seeks to expand its surveillance powers, the government also wants to dilute oversight by jettisoning record-keeping requirements. This week I submitted detailed comments opposing the changes to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security. Read more about Australia Moves To Massively Expand Internet Surveillance

Once again, political campaign videos are being censored by copyright law. This time, Mitt Romney is the victim. Read more about How Copyright Law Censors Campaigns

With cell phone cameras everywhere, it has become common for members of the public to film encounters with the police. Whether the police are behaving professionally or engaged in an unprovoked assault, citizen video provides oversight and potential evidence. But some officers are unhappy with this form of public accountability and have responded by arresting people who try to film them. In an important decision this week, the Seventh Circuit ruled in ACLU v. Alvarez that the public has a First Amendment right to film police. Read more about Seventh Circuit Upholds First Amendment Right to Film Police

The clearance culture is the set of norms and practices within the entertainment industry that mandates—whether or not the law actually requires it—that every scrap of copyrighted or trademarked material be cleared with the original rights-holder. While copyrighted material often does need to be licensed (e.g. soundtrack music), the clearance culture imposes burdens well beyond the law and has become a self-perpetuating and self-serving system of self-censorship. Read more about A Glance Inside The Clearance Culture

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has filed a motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit requesting that the court allow it ten minutes of oral argument as amicus curiae in the case of Cariou v. Read more about Andy Warhol Foundation Requests Argument Time in Cariou v. Prince

How accurate is the Patent and Trademark Office? Can its examiners tell good patents from bad? Read more about A Rosenhan Experiment for the PTO