Licensing Books

This is a small but interesting book which explains how occupational licensing harms consumers through higher prices and lower quality. The basic principles always apply, but the book has lost polemical value over time as the data have changed. It begs for an update.

A more recent book well worth buying is Kleiner's "Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition." which Amazon sells.

Jeff's handbook on software licensing tips and tricks is a dog-eared regular on my bookshelf. Even as a seasoned procurement professional, I find myself referring to this great book time and time again. Jeff does a terrific job of breaking down a software license into logical parts, and then explaining, on a provision-by-provision basis, the provision itself (in layman's terms), the licensee negotiation position, and the licensor negotiation position It's all you need or want to know about software license negotiations in a very easy to follow format and it's a great aid for negotiation strategy planning.

In addition to the provision-by-provision explanations, the book contains other valuable information; for example, sections on software licensing models and contract management. I've saved my employer many, many times more than the price of this book--as well as having avoided a lot of risk in the process.

Jeff's handbook is a perfect complement to the The Contract Negotiation Handbook: An Indispensable Guide for Contract Professionals which provides detailed how-to information on contract negotiation ploys and tactics for folks in the procurement profession.

Happy Negotiating!

Written by exercise science professors Neil Dougherty & Linda Carpenter and attorney/sports official Alan Goldberger, an Sport, Physical Activity, and the Law is a no-nonsense, in-depth survey of the American legal system as it applies to sports and physical activity. Now in an updated third edition, Sport, Physical Activity, and the Law covers first, fourth, and fifth amendment issues in sports; legal responsibility for participant safety; legal issues of exclusion versus inclusion; and much more. The text is accessible to readers of all background without being dumbed down, and is especially helpful for its in-depth descriptions of common legal pitfalls. An absolute "must-have" for physical education instructors, sports coaches, and anyone else involved in teaching, conducting, or supervising sports and physical activity, particularly when responsible for minors.

The books' title indicates the book for use in the Professional Engineering exams. However, it is also an excellent reference for practicing engineers or students taking wood design related courses. I have searched for an introductory reference in timber design for a while...this book is a definte buy.

This truly excellent book presents previously unpublished information on the post WW2 British rotorcraft industry. Many questions regarding the reasons for the failure of various projects are answered using official records, first person accounts and other reliable sources.

There are a few minor technical errors here and there but the type of reader this book will attract will easily be able to immediately identify and correct them while reading the material.

I was hoping to learn some really helpful information about licensing, but I was disappointed finding that the writer only scratched the surface. I learned more in a 15 minute conversation with an attorney.

This book provided a very enjoyable read, as well as comprehensive information that every inventor and entrepreneur would find useful. It answered my questions about the law, and allowed me to really understand how IP law applies to small business, artists, inventors, etc. The tone of the book is very entertaining, and to the point, which makes for a good read.

This book is not a patent cookbook, but rather an excellent reference that allows its readers to really understand the big picture of intellectual property, and how it affects them.

There was very little useful information in the book about the details of obtaining patents or trademarks - a lot of legal definitions and the like but few nuts and bolts for anyone looking to apply for them.

Attorney Jill Gilbert has given us a well written, well researched, highly informative, and easily understandable book on patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc. There is something for everyone, be it businessman, artist, musician, or entrepreneur.

This is a wonderful book. For starters, it's well written, nicely organized, and easy to read. Just as important, it's targeted to entrepreneurs and does a great job of focusing on the issues that relate to starting and growing a new business venture -- rather than simply covering the technicalities of patent drafting, for example.

Perhaps the most valuable contribution this book can make for most entrepreneurs, especially those involved in technology-based ventures, is that it provides a strong foundation for conversations with an attorney. At the end of the day, most of us rely on the expert counsel of a patent attorney (or corporate attorney specializing in licensing transactions, for example). Being prepared to ask the right questions, present the relevant information, etc. is invaluable. It is also cost-effective. Beyond the simple fact that you'll learn a lot by reading this book, if you're using (paying for) patent counsel in any US city this book will pay for itself in about 10 minutes or less.

Steven K. Gold
Author, Entrepreneur's Notebook: Practical Advice for Starting a New Business Venture

As far as I'm concerned, this is The best book on ISA 2000 (much better than the MS publication). Starting of with basics on the different types of firewalls, it soon goes into detail as far as the three implementation uses of ISA. Although will soon be outdated (especially with the release of ISA 2004), this is still a must-buy for all you ISA 2000 admins out there.

When buying this, I was in the position of having to learn it quickly so that I could hit the ground running with my new job.
This book certainly does this. Giving precise explanations of every aspect of isa server, included undocumented knowledge that is also very useful!
Every aspect is drilled in time and time again so that by the end, it cant fail to have stuck.
A must read for anyone wanting to know the nuts and bolts of ISA Server.

I have attended two of Dr. Shinder's seminars in the last 12 months, and he is the absolute authority on this topic. The book is written by and for folks who actually are responsible for deploying ISA; without it you are lost. The "Publishing Services to the Internet" chapter alone will save you at least two days of work if you are trying to work through all of the DNS entries required to do this the right way.

Highly recommended.

I don't usually write reviews of technical books that I read, but in this case I felt compelled to do so, because of how good this book really is (and also to counter the wildly inaccurate critique submitted by the reader from London). This is easily one of the best technical/security books I've ever read. Reading the book, you get the sense that Dr. Shinder knows more about ISA Server than even the folks at Microsoft who developed it. There was not a single thing that I looked for and did not find. And in most cases, the coverage was more detailied and exhaustive than what I expected. I appreciate it when an author actaully takes the time to research, test, and document very complicated scenarios the way this book does.

"In this chapter, we start getting into the specifics of planning and implementing an ISA Server solution for your network." Chapter one of this book uses the word "solution" thirty-one times, and much of the book's writing uses similarly embarassing IT marketing-speak. This makes perfect sense when you flip through the beginning and end of the book and find adverts for commercial web sites, general knowledge courses, and "corporate network training." Shameless promotions in the form of URLs appear in every chapter and at the bottom of each page! Through the book, you deal with hundreds of brilliant gems like, "An intranet in its simplest form is an internal, private Web" (116). Then, when you need to troubleshoot a problem, you find a scarcity of helpful information. For example, I had a troublesome authentication problem that I though might relate to the autodiscovery on client machines. The book has no useful information on the relationship between authentication and auto vs. manaul proxy settings, even though MS addressed the very issue well before SP1 for ISA. The troubleshooting section on authentication is only one page, and it merely explains the three authentication types and suggests that your most likely problem is not enabling the correct types! I run a small W2K network and have to manage all the major components of W2K, Exchange, and ISA. I've found books by Mark Minasi and Jim McBee to be helpful and even fun to read. This book isn't even close. I've had more success finding help on MS's Technet, and that's a sorry indictment.

This product is a favorite of both students and educators in the ADN program in which I teach. For a number of years now we have recommended it to help students prepare for their NCLEX-RN. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn HOW to answer NCLEX style questions. This is not a content mastery book but a strategies book.

Through my years of nursing school, the NCLEX exam grew to be a scary bugaboo that loomed after graduation. Out of fear, I purchased assorted NCLEX manuals, cards, and software to help me prepare. Regardless, my anxiety level was high. When a casual friend mentioned Kaplan's NCLEX-RN, I decided to allocate scant resources for yet another NCLEX manual. Happy Day! This book is different. It teaches Test Strategy. I learned techniques to calmly sift through alternatives and arrive at correct answers. On 'test day,' I walked into the exam area confident and relaxed. In less than one hour, I walked out the same way. The computer ended the exam after the minimum number of questions. PASSING SCORE! Thank You, Kaplan.

Found the book very helpful in how to take the NCLEX exam. By following their way of looking at a test question I have seen my scores improve in this style of testing.

Just passed the NCLEX on my first try! This was one of 2 books I purchased as NCLEX study guides. I found the strategies on how to think about the questions to be very helpful. The questions on the 2 practice exams (one in book, one on CD-ROM) were worded more closely to and required you to think critically just as "real" NCLEX questions. The other book I bought was more content review...which this book is not. This book is simply strategy for tackling questions, and 2 practice exams with very helpful rationales for each answer choice, why it's right or wrong. But compared to the other book I bought for content review, the questions in this book were more hlepful in preparing for the real exam. It's not a thick book and it's very easy to get through. Simple, yet thorough -- not a waste of time and a great book to add to your studying!

(I gave 4 stars instead of 5 becasue the CD-ROM practice test wasn't as great as I had hoped. It's 180 questions, and you have to do the entire exam all at once - timed - and there's NO way to pause it for any reason. Which is possibly because this is the way the real NCLEX is, but still...)

Not a great source of questions but an excellent source for strategies and confidence. I feel that you must first read this book before attempting to review with any other question only book.

this book covers all of modern open source license which i wanted to know. also, it explain them very easy understanding way.

People don't realize how important licensing is with open source, but there is a lot.

Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing is a very needed book and well written.

I am an attorney who does open source software license work for a living. When this book came along, I picked it up, mostly because I was interested in seeing how O'Reilly does branching out well beyond its usual technical subjects. As you are probably aware, 2004 was the year of open source, according to some publications. Well, it was also the year of open source books. I have seen at least five that deal with the topic directly.

Getting to the merits of St. Laurent's book, I struggled with whether to give it three or four stars. You see, even as a lawyer I found it lacking in clarity and flow. Overall, I am opposed to the route he took in excerpting almost every term of each license and then providing exposition of his own that was a lot of times hardly more helpful than the original license language. A better approach to explaining the licenses can be found in Larry Rosen's wonderful book "Open Source Licensing." However, this downside becomes an upside when using the book as a reference, instead of an educational guide (justifying the fourth star). St. Laurent's approach here is useful for going into more depth on a particular license. Perhaps that was the goal all along.

Another advantage this book has over Rosen's is its broader treatment of the growing array of licenses and license types. St. Laurent covers more licenses and for that I am thankful. In the end, I would recommend having a copy of both Rosen's and St. Laurent's book handy. And whatever you do, skip Rod Dixon's "Open Source Software Law."

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing
Andrew M. St. Laurent
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/

When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question was always the same: "What book are you reviewing?" After saying the title was "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing", responses ranged from "What's that?" to "Well, you won't have any trouble sleeping!" One might think that this list of people included relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those within my circle of acquaintances that include software developers, system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer. Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing, particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be overstated.

Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series (http://pocketrefs.oreilly.com/). They are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation are subject matter that easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.

Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.

The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered as a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.

One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless contribution and work toward social good made possible by the considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate about the open source and free software movements, the section of chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development" is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The cliché rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."

The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.

"Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing" is a book which strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either active in or contemplating participation in open source development. Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had this introductory level of understanding about the main open source licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be avoided.

A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to open source projects and the potential legal implications.

Software licensing can be one of the most confusing issues of software installation and development. Most people assume that there are few if any issues with Open Source and Free Software Licensing but that often is not the case. While it may be free to install you wade into murky waters when you change the code, make a new program that uses some of the coding of the open source program, make a derivative program, or a host of other situations. Part of the confusion is that all Open Source or Free Software licensing is not the same. For example there are the MIT, BSD, Apache, and Academic Free Licenses. Or what about the GNU license? Most people don't realize that there are two different versions of GNU licenses, the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)? Then there is the Mozilla Public License, Q Public License, Artistic License, and Creative Commons License.

Author Andrew M. St. Laurent does an excellent job explaining all these various licenses, what you can do and can't do, the various benefits and shortcomings of the licenses and pitfalls to watch for. If you are doing development in this arena, have made an improvement to one of the programs, or have written a program for internal use that might have resell value you can't afford to not understand the nuances of the various licensing agreements. Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing is highly recommended and required reading for anyone in this situation.

IP and intangible assets is significant part of economy.
The book provides a overall perspective to various aspects
in IP. More relevant to Financial, Business and Corporate
community. Has covered topics with enough details in 4 areas:
Identify, Business, Measure and Finance.
A good reference book on my shelf.

"From Ideas to Assets" remains the "go-to" book for intellectual property executives & businesses. It is essential reading for inventors, Boards of Directors, senior & middle level executives, investors, analysts, bankers, R&D departments, CTO's, IP attorneys, licensing consultants -- anyone whose mission is to derive shareholder, business or personal value from intellectual.

"From Ideas to Assets" provides a comprehensive overview of precisely what intellectual assets are, how they work and what you need to know about them to succeed in today's competitive business environment. This is especially relevant today, 2006, when business economics if not corporate survival demands that institutions have access to critical information about their intellectual property along with the know-how and means to exploit it. Corporate governance mandates that Boards and senior corporate management fully understand their company's intellectual property, its value and positioning ... or suffer the consequences.

This book remains an informative, intelligent, accessible and easy-to-follow resource and roadmap for understanding, evaluating and maximizing returns on patents and other intellectual assets. It has been my experience that the biggest stumbling block to successful exploitation of intellectual assets has been the very absence of a clear-cut understanding of what they are, how to exploit them, and why intellectual assets must be an integral part of the institution's overall strategy. "From Ideas to Assets" is a must-read book to bring about this understanding.

This "easy to read" book was especially helpful for me as an MBA candidate to appreciate the growing importance of IP in today's business world. It is one of the best books for managers and investors to acquaint themselves with the business of IP and get a head start on something that is critical for business success today. "From Ideas to Assets" is a book that describes Intellectual Property assets from a perspective that is usually ignored by most companies and individuals today. It enlightens the reader about the importance of IP as Business assets that can be leveraged by companies to gain sustainable competitive advantage and increase shareholder wealth.

This is, in my experience, the single most comprehensive volume to cover intellectual property from legal, economic and financial standpoints. As a practicioner in finance, I have had exposure to the growing inportance of intellectual property assets for corporations, for individuals and for national economies. This volume provides an excellent introduction for lawyers, corporate management, financiers and the general public

Many of the articles in this collection haven't withstood the test of time -- a mere three years.

The reason is an unrealistic view of patents and other IP as financial assets, without any regard for where their value comes from. In industry, for example, a naked patent license (i.e., without accopmpanying know-how) usually only has defensive value against a possble lawsuit. It has little enabling value for someone who wants to learn how to practice the invention.

However, this bit of reality doesn't prevent some authors from fantasizing about stock exchange-style markets for IP. These haven't materialized. Similarly, most (perhaps all) of the Internet-based IP exchanges that sprung up during the dot-com era have failed to survive to the present, at least under their original business model.

Another area that's way beyond reality is the discussion of securitization of IP assets. The original deal of this type -- the famous "Bowie Bonds" deal of 1997 -- was downgraded to junk status in late 2004. In 1997 who knew about Internet file-sharing?

Nonetheless, in 2002 one of the authors in this book claimed that there would be $500 BILLION of these securitization deals by 2005. (You might need to look on the Internet for this, I don't think it's in the book: search for Licent Capital, and you'll find this prediction quoted in an article by Deloitte & Touche, among other places.)

The actual market in late 2004, was around 0.1% of the prediction -- and actually less, since the market was comprised mainly of purchases (i.e. assignments) of royalty streams, not securitization. Moreover, that activity was mainly in the biopharma area. If you think this is less risky than David Bowie royalties, just recall the withdrawal of Vioxx and certain other painkillers from the market earlier in 2005.

Finally, if you do buy this book, just try this experiment (especially regarding Part 4, the most financially-oriented section): try finding the homepages of the various authors' companies. Good luck!