Intellectual Property Books

This book is dry, slow, and dull. It has some (possibly) useful information here and there, but you'll never get to it without falling asleep first or possibly skipping over it in your haste get to the next chapter. Most of the first few chapters talk about people who are cooler than you. Gee don't you wish you were cool? You can be, too! The rest of the book goes on to list things that you either:

a) already know
b) could have found on Google

If you don't know how to make toys and games this book will not tell you how. If you are making games and/or already know how, then this book will bore you to tears.

If you can get a used copy for cheap, I'd say go for it. Otherwise it's two thumbs down.

I was very dissappointed in this book. It seemed the author's intent was to discourage any competition in his market. Other books like The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cashing in On Your Inventions and The Inventor's Bible: How to Market and License Your Brilliant Ideas were much much better.

Being a game inventor for over 25 years, I felt like I was reading my biography as I read this book. It is totally honest about the chances of selling a game to a game company (I don't do toys). However, it is also valid as it relates the stories of inventors regarding the satisfaction and passion the we derive from the creative process. It is well written and enjoyable to read.

The authors take you into the innermost sanctum of the toy industry through colorful, informative interviews that span dozens of subject areas. The toy industry at its rip-roaring, zany, zappy best. All other books I have read about licensing concepts to toy companies pale when compared to this work. This is the book of record.

Joel, Danbury, CT

The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook gave me instant erudition about the arcane world of marketing and licensing inventions. Thanks to this book I have more poise, confidence and a sense of security when I approach potential licensees.

Before you buy this book, get a few highlighters because you will want to mark all the gems of knowledge the authors unselfishly share with readers.

Roz
Harrisburg, PA

Mr. Glazier has the makings of a blockbuster PowerPoint presentation here; unfortunately, he stretched it into a book. Of nearly 200 pages, fully half is devoted to reprinting information (court cases, patent applications) which is available online for free. While convenient access to such detail might appeal to some, it is in sharp contrast to the broad-brush approach Mr. Glazier takes in his original text.

Chapters are interrupted continually by cross-references to the "companion volume" (Patent Strategies for Business, third edition), and one notably unhelpful section effectively says: "You know that chapter from the other book? Well, add this, subtract that, and change the other, and then you'll know what I think about the subject at hand." With so much effort given to padding for length, you'd think he'd just reprint the whole chapter in modified form. It would have been more useful.

Finally, more than 20 pages are devoted to "Tech Trends" -- or, a patent attorney's prognostications about technology's future. As the book was copyrighted in 2000, the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the opinions is now mostly a matter of historical record, and this 10% of the book is now not particularly useful to anyone.

In summary: if you appreciate sweeping overviews that require very little time to read, this may be for you. If you want detail, depth of analysis, or an up-to-date review, look elsewhere.

The new practical ideas in this book are very valuable. The case studies of how real businesses have used patent strategies in software and business methods bring to life how this can affect my business today to help the bottom line. The latest legal developments and cases are analyzed, but there is no useless lawyer-speak, instead the author brings out the rules for running a business profitably that are buried between the lines of the cases. Obviously, this author is on the front lines of the patent wars, and brings back here what he has learned that we can all use. Good for the CEO, Chairman, or General Counsel of any business that uses software or the internet, about how to use all that new patent mumbo-jumbo for revenue, profit and shareholder value. A great e-companion and update to the classic "Patent Strategies for Business" by the same author.

I particularly liked the chapters on 'Patent Denial' [a laugh-riot, and it's not easy to be funny about patents], and the updated rules on 'Virtual Genius and How to Invent on Demand' [the author makes it sound easy, but he as invented several patents himself, and he is a patent lawyer, so he must know-- I am glad he decided to tell the rest of us]. It will be interesting to see how the 'Tech Trends' and forecasts play out. The survey of the new patent practices in banking [yes, that's banking patents] was surprising and enlightening -- and I look forward to a more in depth survey by the same author. The 'Patent Audit' chapters are also useful.

I expect an ROI on my investment in this book of about a zillion percent.

When considering this book be aware that it is a supplement to the author's book titled "Patent Strategies for Business" to which frequent references are made.

That said, this book is still a valuable resource without "Patent Strategies for Business", which I have not read. What I like about this book is the number of real and hypothetical case studies, with well written legal analysis interwoven into the narrative. Much of the book is written in the ponderous legalese you'd expect from such a book, and this is necessary to ensure that there is no ambiguity communicated when legal points are made. However, there is also a lot of plain talk and common sense imparted, which makes this book readable by lay persons.

I personally gained a lot of excellent information from the book, including the fact that patents can be driven by legal as well as technology and marketing strategies. What this means is existing products can be modified with the advice of patent attorneys to be patentable and a part of a company's patent portfolio. This is an interesting and unique approach, and can (and should) be the basis for increasing a company's value.

Also excellent are the chapters that address updating existing products and services for the Internet, making them possibly patentable, and chapter 8's excellent set of steps for intellectual property audits.

Overall, with or without the primary book ("Patent Strategies for Business"), this is must reading for any business, small or large, that wants to capitalize on potential intellectual property assets to increase their net worth and value. It is also an excellent and thought-provoking read for strategic planners. I rate it at five solid stars for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the plethora of ideas the book generated and the clarification of some issues and factors related to services patents that I was researching.

This is a terrible book, a scam if you will. In the first place, charging [$$$]for a under 200 pages, and with very small demensions, is outright theft. Secondly, the book is merly a summary of court cases, which can be obtained freely on the internet or from the US patent office web site, in greater detail. Thirdly, the author repeats himself many, usually entire paragraphs worded in slightly different ways. I can only think is is an attempt to "pat" the book and add more pages.

This book provides a little over 80 pages of easily read advice on patent strategies involving software/internet-based business methods. It provides a quick overview of two landmark cases. More importantly, it suggests areas for patenting and checklists for IP strategy. The book was helpful as a broad overview. However, I thought that more detail should have been included. The last 100 pages were filled with "Tech Trends" and reprinted case data. The "Tech Trends" chapters were the author's predictions on the future of tech, and while interesting (and occasionally incorrect), don't include any patent-related analysis. Also, the book dates from late 1999 and an included survey chapter analyzed patents up to Jan 1999. Given that the State Street Bank case wrapped in 1998, it's a shame that more recent analyses weren't provided either in the book or on an associated web page, especially since many patents had just been filed before the survey.

The bottom line: useful, informative book but could have used more detail, newer data, and incorporated information from the companion volume. The author refers to strategies such as "submarining", "picket fence", and "leap frog" without giving a single line of explanation, instead plugging the companion volume. I have encountered those strategies in other legal readings/coursework, and I believe a few pages for each concept (in replacement of the chapters on Tech Trends) would have greatly enhanced the value of this book.

The problem with the several texts available on digital copyright or Digital Rights Management is that the topic demands a treatment from at least three different perspectives: namely legal, technical and business. There are several books that try to tackle the topic of digital copyright from a legal viewpoint, and this one is clearly coming from a technical perspective. Legal issues are covered, but rather superficially. More surprisingly the crucial business issues and models that are driving interest in DRM are barely mentioned and there is no dicussion of the business models that are working and those that are not. Disappointingly many of the technical issues are also fudged in a way that will leave non-technical audiences confused, and those who are following technical developments frustrated. The fact is that, technically at least, DRM is an area where approaches, technologies and standards are all in rapid development and the industry has failed to converge on any single direction. This book's effort to offer a comprehensive review of available products means that it risked redundancy before it was published, as many of the companies and technologies have ceased to be relevant. What the world still needs is a book on DRM that reviews the law, discusses the business models (and consumer needs) that are driving developments, and describes fundamental approaches in a way that will remain relevant whatever product Microsoft may impose on us all next year. Unfortunately this book intrigues enough to encourage one to want to know more about DRM, but never really provides the answers.

DRM is a confusing topic, and this one of the clearest expositions of DRM (or most any other technical topic!) that I've ever run across. It demystifies a complex subject with simple straightforward language, describes key vendors and organizes them accurately into categories, and even contains a wealth of useful materials such as checklists to help the customer determine business/technical requirements, evaluate vendors, etc.

A must-have for any publisher, intellectual property lawyer, venture capitalist, technology vendor, or consulting firm dealing with digital content distribution or online intellectual property.

This book combines a business strategist's view of the DRM space with a sound explanation of the underlying technology, and also explains how both have evolved over the past decade. It's rare to find both views in any book, particularly one about an emerging software market. Usually, insights into markets like this book provides require purchasing research reports and speaking one-on-one to industry insiders. So, save yourself $10,000 and three weeks of work ... buy the book.

In an ever changing business landscape, I find nothing more comforting than relevant information. As an web application developer I used to always have questions about legality and DRM that nobody could answer. This book has a permananent spot on my shelf!

As noted below, DRM consists of legal, technical and business issues and anyone trying to provide an overview of all three has their work cut out for them. Particularly in the early chapters of the book, these authors give it a good try.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the book is that they try to treat the technology standards and products available on the market, and the market is just changing too quickly for that to be for more than just a superficial look. Too much of what they discuss is already outdated, out-of-business, merged with other offerings or otherwise defunct. Not the fault of the authors, just the nature of the DRM market.

This book is:

Not a good read if you already understand the basic issues and hope to get more insight into the technology-- go to the web for that.

Absolutely a good read if you want to become familiar in a basic way in the underlying issues. Part 1 of the book is really useful reading even to help people who are pretty familiar with the topic structure their thinking.

Now, I only read about forty pages, but I *really* didn't like what I read. The book is obviously rushed, and not very informative.

I have been doing research on securing public instant messaging protocols and thought this would be a great resource. It isn't. At least for AOLIM, it told me much less than I was able to find on the Internet with less than an hour of searching.

Here are some spot examples of problems:

"...as previously discussed, utilities such as dsniff can be used to decrypt these passwords while they are bring transmitted over a network."

But I cannot find a previous discussion. In fact, this is mention pretty much in isolation...there is no explanation of *how* one would use dsniff to decrypt the passwords. And, aside from mentioning that the passwords are encrypted using XOR encryption, there are no further details on what is going on - such as what is being XORed with what.

Later on the same page it says:

"Figure 2.1 shows the main screen for signing into the AIM service, while figure 2.xxx shows dsniff revealing AIM passwords."

What is with that 2.xxx? It looks like that figure never got included, and the 2.xxx was a place-holder that never got filled in! In fact, I cannot find a figure ANYWHERE in the book depicting dsniff uncovering the password.

The discussion of the AIM protocol takes up just under TWO PAGES. WHAT!? AOLIM is incredibly complex, involving either the OSCAR or TOC protocol, both of which are rather complex. Searching Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR_protocol) provides MUCH more information than is included in the text.

Finally, the discussion of encryption is A PARAGRAPH. It pretty much says that AIM includes encryption. It gives no indication as to how the encryption works other than that it involves certificates. It doesn't even say WHAT KIND of certificates.

I am returning the book post-haste. If the abysmal quality of the coverage of AOLIM is any indication, this book is not definitely not worth acquiring.

Noted security veteran Bruce Schneier has observed that for those organizations that have incorrectly deployed cryptography, it is akin to putting a big flagpole in front of your facility and hoping that it will stop any attackers from breaking in. Of course, any attacker with intelligence will simply go around the flagpole rather than running into it."

Similarly, many organizations have deployed myriad security hardware and software products in their infrastructure. But when it comes to instant messaging and peer to peer applications, these applications often execute below the radar of many security products. This is due to the fact that the security infrastructure in many organizations was not architected to deal with such applications. These applications often have so much functionality that it obviates much of the security afforded by the security hardware and software products.

Using file transfer as an example, many organizations have policies and controls in place to stop the use of protocols such as ftp and tftp. This is fine, but that will only work for the ftp protocol. File transfer can still be carried out by most instant messaging clients, and that can pose serious security risks.

With that, Securing IM and P2P Applications for the Enterprise provides an excellent overview on how to handle, manage and secure IM, P2P, and IRC applications. This book is written for security and system administrators that need specific details on how to control and secure IM, P2P and IRC applications in their organization.

The need to get a handle on IM and P2P is crucial given that IM has turned into a global communications medium with most organizations today reported that they allow it for business usage. Many marketing and technical support calls are now handled via IM and this translates in to well over 250 million IM users worldwide. P2P is great for downloading music and movies, but that that poses serious security and legal liability risks when done on most corporate networks.

But with all the benefits that IM provides, it introduces many security and privacy risks. IM viruses, identity theft issues, phishing, spyware and SPIM (SPAM over IM) are just a few of the many risks. These risks can turn into intellectual property losses and legal liability issues especially when they are combined with targeted attacks on corporate IM users. Companies that don't have an effective way in which to deal with IM and P2P are in serious danger as most IM and P2P threats fly under the radar of many traditional security solutions.

The book has a fairly straightforward approach. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to IM and the most common security issues that IM brings into an organization. The bulk of the remainder of the book details various different IM applications in Part 1 (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Google, Skype), P2P applications in Part 2 (Gnutella, eDonkey/eMule, BitTorrent, FastTrack) and IRC networks and applications in Part 3.

Each chapter details the specific architecture of each application, its protocols, security issues, and solutions in which to secure the application. System administrators can use many of the checklists to quickly perform the initial steps necessary to secure their organization from unauthorized IM, P2P, and IRC applications.

Each chapter also provides significant details about the internals on how each application operates. In addition, various 3rd-party tools that can be used to secure and limit the various applications are listed.

Many companies are finding that a significant amount of their bandwidth is being used by P2P applications and Part 2 describes how to secure networks from the use of P2P applications. This is not always an easy thing to carry out given that many P2P applications, such as Gnutella are designed to easily bypass many of the security control mechanisms placed against it. Administrators will find that in this case, simply blocking Gnutella ports will not block all Gnutella traffic and the application still will be able to run. What is required in this case is the use of a firewall that supports deep packet inspection. Chapter 9 helpfully lists the commands to use when using iptables to block Gnutella traffic.

Chapter 12 provides an interesting look at FastTrack, which is the P2P protocol and network used by clients such as Grokster, Morpheus and other file sharing programs. The chapter also uses Ethereal to detail the internals of FastTrack.

Part 3 deals with IRC and is the sparsest part of the book. This is due to the fact the P2P and IM are much more heavily used on enterprise networks, which this book is geared to.

The only negatives about the book are its price, and some of its formatting. At $49.95, it is on the higher-end of computer security books, with the majority of such titles being in the $25.99 - $39.99 range. The formatting uses a font size that is somewhat larger than other book. This seemingly serves to achieve a high page count.

In addition, the book often references tables of secondary information that spans a few pages (for examples see pages 72-80, 115-120 and more). Such information would be better served in a multiple-column table in a smaller font. Printing the information in such a manner can cut down on the page total, and save a few trees at the same time.

Besides those two minor issues, Securing IM and P2P Applications for the Enterprise is a most helpful guide. Security and system administrators can use the book to get a handle on the increasing number of IM, P2P, and IRC applications that are found on the corporate networks they support.

I had high hopes for Securing IM and P2P Applications for the Enterprise (SIAPAFTE), and thankfully this book delivers. SIAPAFTE is a modern, well-written, thorough guide to instant messaging (IM), peer-to-peer (P2P), and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks and related security issues. I recommend all network and security administrators read this book.

SIAPAFTE is helpful in many respects. First, the book is up-to-date. It covers events as recent as the fall of 2005. The book also takes a historical approach to describing technologies by describing when and how they were introduced. Readers learn of the evolution of various IM and P2P clients and networks, as IM network owners seek to shut out rival clients and industry groups shut down P2P infrastructure.

Second, SIAPAFTE takes a comprehensive look at IM, P2P, and IRC technologies. I believe the authors picked the right networks and clients to discuss. IM is fairly simple to understand, since the clients are closely tied to the networks. P2P is less clear, since people often refer to clients like KaZaA (or Kazaa) without understanding that FastTrack is the underlying network. I learned of many technologies for the first time reading this book. Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and Kademlia are two examples.

Third, SIAPAFTE is well-written. The text is clear and the authors communicate their points in an organized and coherent manner. This does not mean the book is without flaws. Although Zeveck's one-star review (after reading just 40 pages -- please) is ridiculous, he is correct about a bad figure reference on p 27. The bottom of p 235 features a similar problem, and some pages have large chunks of inexplicable white space. I also thought the large lists of IM threats was not needed, especially when some of them ran several pages.

I liked the protocol analysis of various networks, particularly those for P2P. It seemed some protocols got more attention than others, however. The inclusion of IPTables and Snort rules was a nice touch. I would have liked to see that for the IM and IRC parts too. The IRC section could have used an IRC command reference. Since this is a book about IM and such in the enterprise, it would have been helpful to learn how to set up a secure internal IM system like Jabber or even a local IRC server.

For those keeping track of Syngress' recent tendency to reprint chapters from other books, SIAPAFTE is no exception. The last 20 pages in Ch 7 are Ch 13 from Skype Me! Oddly, no credit is given in SIAPAFTE for that other book's material.

Overall, I think anyone involved with networks or security will find SIAPAFTE a great resource. I found the book to be highly informative, and I recommend you read it. Addressing the issues in this review would merit a five star review for a second edition.

There are not a lot of books that cover IM and P2P security - when I found this I was skepitcal at first, but quickly found it to be a great reference, and the definitive source of information on SEcuring IM and P2P.

The book is very well organized with Chapters dedicated to each major program, making it easy to educate yourself on the common pitfalls of having IM and P2P in your environment.

This book is a great source for information on the dangers of instant messaging and p2p networks. Although this material can apply to personal use, it is geared more towards system administrators and networked environments.

The structure of the book is very well laid out, giving you the ability to jump from product to product or area of interest (such as AIM, eDonkey, or IRC as a whole). This approach makes it easy to locate the information you are looking for quickly, making it an excellent reference. The author has done a great job in being realistic is the approach to these systems. Rather than totally restricting their use, this book helps you to live with these systems, recognizing that they are often used or required for businesses.

If you are running a network, you almost definitely have this type of traffic on it. This book is definitely an excellent resource with large amounts of information on multiple types of systems

If you are planning or even doing any type of business in the internet, this book is a MUST read.
Frenza covers all the angles step by step, and I got excited realizing the power and the potential of running a successful internet business. He really opened the floodgates of success for us.
Gary Block OWNER Route 66 Classics www.route66classics.com

The book provides much of the same insight I found in "How to Make Your Design Business Profitable" by Joyce M. Stewart, although the Stewart book tends to be more management-oriented. The "Price Guide," in contrast, gives more advice on the day-to-day production of new media. It's a good book for someone new to the field, with an especially good section on putting together a project proposal. There is one major flaw: their figures for the Web are off. Check with the Advertising Age Web Site for a more current resource on Web pricing. I don't know if their figures for other 'New Media' or the salaries are accurate. I do know I'm only making about half their quoted average starting salary for Web designers, but whether I'm representative of the industry is an open question. Also, this book was realeased in January 1997, and cites examples from as late as September 1996, so it was probably rushed to press, and the writing shows it. The run-ons, bad grammar, misspelling and so forth can be distracting. Overall, though, it's a good book that has fallen victim to the speed with which the new media industry changes.

It's great to finally come across a book that sketches out the borders of new media business practise. I run a Web design firm in Ottawa, and while I found that many of the numbers seemed to be a bit off, the descriptions of the margin calculations and proposal process would very useful for someone starting out. Let's hope there is a revised second edition of this book soon.

Books covers basics of preparing a simple business proposel, and emphasises the importance of applying the same basic business principles to wab & new media, i.e. contracts, estimating costs, recording actual costs vs estimated etc.
Pricing for web services is outdated, but this is to be expected from print media.
Illustrates how not to under-cost a web project, something that is easy to do if you are new.

I think this book was good. It helped me alo

This new edition of Peter Viereck's classic is very gratifying in that it has stood the test of time. Prophetic when it was published before the war, wise and insightful when I first read it in the sixties. Even more interesting forty years later. This is one of the few intellectual historians whose autobiography I would loved to read.

This book has a sweeping scope that can initially seem impressive. Until you fact-check Viereck's claims, especially his citations. This was no genuine exploration of the origins of Nazi ideas, "the roots of the Nazi mind". This was a polemicist with an extremely conservative cultural, religious and political agenda, smearing with a proto-Nazi tag those aesthetic and cultural movements that he happens to dislike.

Viereck's main target was the romantic movement of the 19th century, especially but not only Richard Wagner. Although Viereck wrote in the manner of a moralist condemning the romantics from on high, his agenda led him into certain failings of his own. His portrayal of "Father Jahn" and other figures bear false witness, and he commits academic sins like altering texts, inventing fictitious works, misleading quotation, and the like.

Basically Viereck's story was that the National Socialist flame was lit by Friedrich Jahn, who supposedly influenced the early German romantics, Fichte, Herder and so on, who then passed the torch to Wagner, who synthesised their evil ideas into a fully-fledged Nazi philosophy with all pieces complete, from Führer-principle to Holocaust, which Hitler then picked up and applied.

This is nonsense. First, the historical Friedrich Jahn was neither a proto-Nazi nor an especially important figure. Viereck truthfully called Jahn a German nationalist, which sounds sinister because of 20th century history, but glossed over the fact that Jahn's nationalism came at a time when the German states were occupied, ruled and plundered by foreign armies under Napoleon. To be a nationalist under those circumstances was to resist tyranny, not promote it.

Viereck elides the fact that Jahn was an outspoken democrat who insisted that French rule should be replaced by a democratic, independent and unified Germany. I feel no defensiveness towards Jahn; though no proto-Nazi he was an antisemite with insufficient other merits to balance that fact. But misrepresentation is irritating.

Viereck greatly exaggerates Jahn's importance. Jahn founded his Turnverein (gymnastics organisation) movement in 1811 and lost control of it with his imprisonment in 1819, and though he remained generally respected until his death in 1852, he exercised precious little influence. I've looked for references to Jahn in the work of the German romantics, and found only a satirical _attack_ on Jahn in an 1823 play by the romantic playwright Joseph von Eichendorff.

Viereck's portrait of the early German romantics defames admirable people, brotherhood-of-man democrats and liberals like Herder. Fichte is less admirable, but is also utterly misrepresented. Even those German Romantics who did lose their liberalism in old age didn't turn to any form of radical rightwingery that could be called proto-Nazi. They reverted to conservative Catholicism and monarchism.

Viereck's attack on Wagner illustrates his method. For example Viereck's first, 1941, edition of this book was the first text to frame Wagner by quoting the concluding words of "Judaism in Music" while - without alerting the reader - omitting Wagner's key words, "for then we shall be one and indivisible", in order to hide the fact that Wagner was calling for assimilation. This deception has been much imitated since.

(Viereck also brings in additional words from another Wagner essay. Several of Viereck's supposed Wagner quotes are actually mosaics assembled by Viereck from fragments of Wagner text. Wagner was undoubtedly a disgusting antisemite; Viereck's damning quotes from Cosima's _Diaries_ are real enough. Though selective; he does not cite passages where Wagner defends Jews from antisemitic attacks, or says he would no longer write against the Jews. And Wagner called for assimilation, unlike some of his contemporaries who really were proto-Nazis.)

Viereck claimed that Wagner's call for the founding of a people's army, in his "The Revolution" essay, was "a dream akin to what Röhm in 1934 envisaged for his Storm Troopers." But Wagner's text called for the army to be under the control of a democratically elected government. Did Viereck really not know the difference between Storm Troopers in a Nazi state, and an army accountable to an elected government?

Viereck also claimed that Wagner invented the Führer-principle. You'll find no such idea in Wagner, since Wagner was a young anarchist who eventually drifted as far right as supporting constitutional monarchy. So Viereck claimed that when Wagner used "a number of other terms, especially 'hero', 'folk-king' and 'Barbarossa'", he really meant "Führer". Viereck pioneered the technique of claiming that if Wagner's words don't support your conspiracy theory, then the words must be in a secret code. Thus anything can be said to mean any old thing, making "proving" a case much easier.

Viereck also invented a Wagner essay called "Heroism", which apparently called for racial purity under a dictatorship. There is no such Wagner essay, nor any Wagner essay that ever called for either racial purity or dictatorship. Wagner's clearest late statement on political systems, "State and Religion", advocated constitutional monarchy, the monarch exercising a symbolic function above politics, while political parties of "men of equal rights" contended for office.

Wagner did write, in an essay called "Heroism and Christianity", that there was no such thing as a German race and that Europeans should get used to racial intermingling, explicitly advocating racial equality "under a universal moral concord, such as only Christianity can bring about."

Is "Heroism and Christianity" related to Viereck's fictitious "Heroism" essay? Hard to say. Still, Viereck, who writes from a rightwing Christian worldview, needed to insist that the late Wagner was anti-Christian, though the essays and _Diaries_ show this is quite untrue. This can have comic results, as when Viereck used an anti-Christian remark by the young Wagner to prove that _Parsifal_, written decades later, must be anti-Christian. It may be that Viereck, with his own agenda, was embarrassed by the words "and Christianity" from Wagner's "Heroism and Christianity" title, so he "disappeared" them, along with the actual content of that essay.

Summary: This book has been tremendously influential, especially in its earlier editions. But it is a sustained piece of academic misrepresentation, and its influence has been pernicious and regrettable.


Laon

This transaction reprint from 1941 is a classic chestnut and still reads well as one of the first analyses of the sources of fascist ideology. The case against the Romantics, and such as Fichte, is always important, although it is open to challenge. We can find the earlier sources, but no simple causal sequence--and yet...
As Nietzsche well knew Wagner's spiritual odyssey was a strange one and we see the attempt at high tragedy itself turning into a tragedy, irony indeed.
One of those books... Significant and lively reading with a 'genealogy' on the mark.

_Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler by Peter Viereck was one of the earliest books written during the World War to show the influence of Wagner on the thinking of Hitler. Previously it had been believed that Nietzsche's amoralistic thinking had played a larger role in the development of Hitler's Third Reich. However, as Viereck shows in this book, it was indeed Wagner who was the antisemite (and one of the most virulent antisemites even prior to the coming of Hitler).

This edition put out by Transaction publishers of _Metapolitics_ is expanded not only to cover the influence of German Romanticism on Hitler (which preceded Wagner himself), but also to include a new introduction and several appendices on Albert Speer (Hitler's architect of the Third Reich), Count Claus von Stauffenberg (the aristocrat who tried to assassinate Hitler), the poet George Heym, and the poet Stefan George and his circle.

In the letters of Richard Wagner is included a letter from an admirer and ardent nationalist which states: "To be genuinely German, politics must soar to metapolitics. The latter is to commonplace pedestrian politics as metaphysics is to physics." Metapolitics as defined by Viereck is the type of political thought serving as inspiration for Hitler and his Third Reich regime.

The book begins with a discussion of German Romanticism and its influence on Hitler. For Viereck, the Third Reich may be perceived in some sense as German Romanticism writ large. The book also discusses the influence of "Father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a German nationalist in the 1800's, on the storm troopers and on Volkish nationalism in general. The book next moves on to discussing the case of Wagner. Many of Wagner's operatic pieces can be seen as allegories for different components of his metapolitical thinking. For example, it has been suggested that certain characters (the dwarves and the dragon) represent capitalists or Jews within his operas. The book subsequently discusses Houston Stewart Chamberlain whose racialist tracts served as inspiration for Hitler. Also, the book includes several chapters on Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi philosopher. Rosenberg was also influenced by German Romanticism and his understanding of history proved particularly virulent. Viereck opposed Christian morality to Rosenberg's neo-paganism.

In sum, this book presents an interesting discussion of some of the precursors of the Third Reich. Both German Romanticism and Richard Wagner played a large part in the development of the thinking of Hitler, and also in many of his primary proponents and Nazi fellow travelers.

Tom Lehrer a few decades back satirically warned us about the march of 'the Folk Song Army'. He was lampooning the social radicals of America in the early 1960s. Maybe his warning came too late for Germany which had it's own folk song army to deal with.

Recently deceased Peter Viereck is something of an interesting character. His father, George Sylvester Viereck, possibly the Kaiser's illegitimate grandson, argued the pro-German case in America during Woodrow Wilson's run up to war. By all accounts his Great War oppositionism was both principled and loyal to America. After Versailles however GSV became more radical in his pro-Germanism and was eventually imprisoned as a German agent during World War Two. He also broke with his two sons around this time, both of whom served in the US Army with one dying in the Anzio landings, and the other, Peter, working for the Army Psychological Warfare Division.

Peter Viereck sees Germany as uniquely torn between two souls, in short, a western looking, european and Christian civilisation soul and a northern looking Volkish Kultur soul. Goethe versus Wagner. Considering his family history perhaps the conflict struck home.

Peter Viereck wrote "Metapolitics" whilst a Harvard undergraduate. Not bad work for a twenty four year old! He went on to an academic career and earned the 1949 Pullitzer Prize for poetry. A life long political conservative he was an ardent critic of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

The term 'metapolitics' is derived from Wagner, similar to 'geopolitics', it refers to the German nationalists' metaphysical vision as it approached cultural and spiritual issues, where 'geopolitics' looked at the intersection of geography and politics. The book was one of the first in English to explore the Wagnerian roots of Nazism. Wagner was not only a great composer but something of a radical political pamphleteer. Despite having jewish promoters and agents Wagner blamed a jewish conspiracy for is works not being as popular as he imagined. Viereck explores not only the cultural roots of nazism but the appeal of nazism to what he calls Germany's "Greenwich Village Warriors", alienated bohemians in exile in their own hometown. And then there is the unusual number of 'failed' artists drawn to the nazi movement.

Viereck's analysis starts with Ludwig Jahn, who Viereck recognises as a pioneer German "Volkish" nationalist, a forerunner of nazism but perhaps one who would be appalled by the later developments of his thought. It proceeds via Wagner, the Wagnerians and moves on to Hitler's "official philosopher" Rosenberg.

He speculates Wagner may also be appalled at how his ideas were used but in Wagner's case, he was truly a proto-nazi, there is a stronger chain of responsibility than in Jahn's case, despite some minor retreat from full bore Volkism towards the end of his career. In any case , the first generation of 'Wagnerites', including family members (for example, the in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain) were not just proto-nazis but the real thing, indeed taking Hitler into their circle as "Uncle Wolf" to the children.

Viereck explores the development of Volkish German romanticism, and he doesn't condemn all threads of romanticism, in laying a popular and intellectual foundation for the later growth of nazism. He also explores the role if Rosenberg and the "Realpolitlik" pioneers, Fichte, Hegel and Treitschke in the development of nazi ideas. Viereck notes the attempts by the Nazis to appropriate Nietzche, something some of the philosopher's family promoted, but highlights Nietzche's prescient warnings against the rise of antisemitic German nationalism.

Viereck's analysis helps get us beyond the simplistic and misleading Verailles / inflation / depression analyses of the origins of nazism. Much of Rosenberg's "Myth of the Twentieth Cenury" was written before Versailles and the worst of the Great Depression did not hit Germany until after the Nazis had already emerged as Germany's biggest political party. Viereck provides some unfortunately brief debunking of economic determinist explanations of Nazism, focusing mainly on the how Hitler double crossed and ultimately expropriated his former sponsor, the industrialist Thysen. To his credit he does recognise that the allies were not guiltless in feeding the bear, besides the well known condemnations of Chamberlainian appeasement, there was the British Hunger blockade in World War 1 and the French occupation of the Rhineland, all of which undermined the liberal west's claim to moral leadership, at least in the eyes of the German public, when dealing with Hitler.

Viereck devotes about a chapter or so to another idea that needs more exposure. He says we tend to overestimate the otherwise rootless Weimar Republic. It's very foundation may have been something of a strategem by Germany's military leaders to avoid popular responsibility for defeat, obtain a softer peace and pave the way for a militarist renewal down the track. Certainly the artifice of circumventing Versailles armament restrictions was well practiced before Hitler assumed power. And his assumption of power was aided by old school militarists who retained pivotal positions in the army and bureaucracy throughout the Weimar period where they behaved like a government-in-exile at home.

Still the core of Viereck's book is in analysing the 'spiritual' dimension of nazism. This can be easily forgotten, for example, nazi racism, although it did attract a corps of racial scientists, their role, however repulsive, was more opportunist and parasitic to the whole enterprise. Nazi racialism, as expounded by Rosenberg was not even a corrupted version of darwinism, it was essentially a romantic attachment to 'blood'.

Readers should check the various editions of Metapolitics available. I have the 1941 edition which comes with excellent appendices that include correspondence with Wagner scholar Thomas Mann as well as some reviews from the period. I understand the later editions include more supplementary material. Also readers should hunt online for Peter Viereck's 2004 essay entitled "Metapolitcs Revisited" which provides some additional insights and further developments that I am sure readers of the original volume would appreciate.

complete tripe. this is written to those do nothings who spend time debating unimportant subjects that have no bearing on anything.

some people do something useful for society and then there is David R. Koepsell, wasting time and space on planet earth.

In the excellent "Ontology of Cyberspace," author David Koepsell neatly dispels commonplace myths and legal ambiguities emanating from the cyberspace revolution and challenges the often impenetrable, lingo-laden world of computer-mediated phenomena.

"Cyberspace is nothing really strange or special," says Koepsell, and very much a part of ordinary experience, taking up real space in real time in the form of bits, bytes, algorithms, and programs. These "products" or "expressions" of cyberspace "are best treated by a "unified intellectual property scheme," argues Koepsell, which will go a long way in allowing cyberspace to flourish as an economic and social power.

Idealized and constructivist notions of cyberspace, which hinge on the belief that computers somehow transcend the physical realm, are clearly called into question.

Computer-generated objects and phenomena are very much like books, machines--real property--and shouldn't require special treatment by the law, but because a "correct" ontology of cyberspace isn't clearly delineated in the law, ambiguities and contradictions have arisen in attempts to protect (copyright/patent) the properties of cyberspace, according to Koepsell. It's the way in which cyberspace is understood and categorized that determines how it will be regulated--Koepsell provides an ontology of cyberspace that is practical, realistic, and logical.

"Computer-mediated phenomena are expressive objects just like any others," he writes, but "misguided lawmaking and misperceptions in popular culture about the nature of computer-mediated phenomena will continue to hinder this medium's true potential and stifle its growth."

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to understand the true nature/components of cyberspace and how its growth is hindered until its nature is clearly agreed upon in a legal sense.

David Koepsell is a philosophically and legally trained internet ontologist who has decisively established cyberspace as not a realm populated by virtual objects, but as an arrangement or ordinary objects (like electrical charges) resident in computers and peripherals, and nothing more. Any internet ontologist, any lawyer dealing with intellectual property, and anyone facinated with computers and the internet will find this book a welcome and refreshing antidote to mystical, McLuhan-esque conceptions. And Koepsell explains several alternatives to the complex and prolix system of patents and copyrights as ways of addressing intellectual property. A MUST READ!!

David Koepsell's claim in this volume is easily summarized: "cyber"-type objects do not subsist in some mysterious Land of Otherwhere; electronic media possess no strange mystical powers; intellectual property law does not require any major revolutions in order to deal with such topics; indeed it should be simplified in order to eliminate the artificial distinction between invented processes and original expressions.

As it happens, I agree in essence with every one of these conclusions. What I do not see is how Koepsell's discussion of "ontology" gets him there.

As for that ontology itself, Koepsell tempts me to climb onto a few of my favorite hobby-horses. (For example, he adopts popular misconceptions about "idealism" and "realism" all but wholesale, treats the two as contraries, and moreover fails to distinguish properly between subjective and objective idealism. The traditional foil of "idealism" is not "realism" but "materialism"; properly understood, idealism is itself a form of realism.) In general, though I don't wish to be too harsh here, I was not enormously impressed by the alleged philosophical sophistication of his approach (quite apart from my specific disagreements with it). On the contrary, it seems to me to be "deeply superficial" and littered with misunderstandings (not to mention airy references to Aristotle) to the extent that it succeeds in saying anything at all.

What Koepsell means by "ontology" is better described simply as sorting things into kinds. (Have you ever sorted laundry? Congratulations: you were doing ontology, just the way Aristotle did!) What I would call the genuinely ontological questions -- e.g. whether and in what way kinds themselves actually exist; whether and in what sense there are any real universals -- never arise. (Being a "web ontologist" is therefore, one supposes, a _much_ easier job than being an ontologist.) Which also means that we never reach any significant questions about whether and how computer-based abstract objects exist -- an odd feature in a book allegedly dealing with the ontology of cyberspace.

Now, mind you, I have no objection at all to attempts to classify computer-based objects. But I suspect a naked emperor is at work in all this talk of "ontology": if there is anything in it beyond an attempt to lend an aura of sophistication and high intellectual lineage to consultants on dotcommery, I have failed to find it.

But readers interested in these topics can sort through my older reviews (or drop me a line) in order to find better books on philosophy. (Or, for a good book specifically on ontology, scare up a used copy of E. Jonathan Lowe's undeservedly-out-of-print _Kinds of Being_.) Rather than pick more nits about philosophical misconceptions, I'd prefer to ask a more fundamental question: how does all this "ontology" advance Koepsell's argument in the first place?

For it seems to me that his case would not have suffered the slightest loss had he left out his first few chapters and gone straight to his point. So far as I can tell, at the level of generality at which his "ontology" operates, there is nothing whatsoever from which his specific conclusions about the nature of cyber-objects can be derived.

Nor do his conclusions seem to be compatible _only_ with his essentially Searlean empiricist/materialist outlook. My own is quite different from his (I am a rationalist and an objective idealist with a more or less Platonic view of universals) -- and yet, somehow, I manage to agree that computer-based objects live right here in the ordinary world rather than in some mystical cyber-realm. So what exactly has all this "ontologizing" added to his case?

Now, I've been a little hard on Koepsell's book here, but I don't mean to imply that it isn't worth reading. Far from it: it's actually very good once all the ontologizing stops and the discussion of cyberlaw gets seriously rolling.

Just don't make the mistake of supposing that accepting Koepsell's legal conclusions commits you to his metaphysical premises. Frankly, his philosophical machinery is poorly designed -- and, fortunately, largely unused.

With his superbly presented work, The Ontology Of Cyberspace: Law, Philosophy, And The Future Of Intellectual Property, David Koepsell addresses the problems of protecting intellectual property rights in the computer age. Koepsell, Executive Director of the Center for Applied Ontology and adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at the State University of New York: Buffalo, defines terminology, identifies the problems inherent in a rapidly expanding electronic communications technology that transcends national boundaries, and has become ubiquitous in our personal, social, economic, educational, business, and literary life. The Ontology Of Cyberspace presents both the scholarly community and the non-specialist general reader with a very highly recommended, articulate, definitive, thoughtful, informative, and "reader friendly" text.

Nancy Wolff has produced an up-to-date and extremely useful resource for those whose careers depend upon a working knowledge of copyright law, trademark protection and rights of privacy issues. And this is everyone working in the field of photography.

This book is the one that anyone who makes their living in the image business, be they a professional photographer, image licensing agency, designer or publisher has been waiting for.

Nancy Wolff is one of the leading copyright lawyers in the country and what she doesn't know (and generously share with her readers) is probably not worth knowing.

The most significant issue facing anyone who makes their living in the creative world today is how to protect their copyright. It's getting harder and harder as digital manipulation and copyright infringements increase, together with general ignorance on the subject.

In fact this book could save your livelihood if you are a photographer hoping to continue to make a living by your camera! Shooting the greatest pictures in the world is not going to help if you don't understand the basics of your rights and how to protect them.

I manage an international picture library and have read this book from cover to cover and found it completely invaluable.
L Dives

I bought this book because I wanted a better understanding of the legal aspects of photography. I expected to get a better understanding of contracts, property and persons release forms, but instead got a book that dealt mainly with copyright law. It's a boring book, I couldn't get past the first chapter. I skimmed through the 150 pages of 200 and something page book to see how copyright law is written, how the law is interpreted, the history of the law, cases of copyright violation. Basically 150 pages of information that could be found in the one page form after putting copyright into a search engine. I will be searching for a better book, I guess this one will just sit on the shelf and collect dust.

In a field plagued by rampant misinformation and vague legal theorizing, this is bar none the best down-to-earth, layman-friendly explanation of copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity and privacy, and contracts that I've ever read. I'm a lawyer practicing in this field, and I recommend this book to ALL visual artists, not just photographers. Ms Wolff explains the legal issues in plain language, citing to appropriate recent cases and keeping her advice grounded in everyday practical reality. This book is a gem, and should be on the bookshelf of every lawyer and every visual arts professional.

This is an excellent book. It's too bad its title is so misleading about its contents.

Wolff's book is divided into three sections. More than half of the book is devoted to copyright law, with an explanation of the statutes and cases affecting copyright in the United States. It includes a section on registering one's photographs for protection under these statutes. The second section is on basic trademark law, and here the author almost dismisses such law as it relates to photographers' work. The final section deals with the law of privacy and publicity. Wolff examines two states at the extremes in this area, but acknowledges that the law varies in each state and doesn't try to provide any across-the-board rules.

One inescapable conclusion that photographers who read this book will reach is that although it is not necessary to register one's works to preserve one's copyright, it may not be worth pursuing one's remedies for non-registered works. That's a good lesson to learn, and well worth the price of this book

What is misleading is to suggest that this book is a general legal handbook for professional photographers. Most photographers will want to know about other legal subjects not covered in the book, like contracts and leases and of these there is no mention. Indeed, this book seems more like the texts for lawyers that I read when starting my research when I was a lawyer involved in intellectual properties. It will also be of interest to stock agencies and photo buyers more than photographers. I suspect that photographers' eyes will glaze over as they start to read about particular cases and the courts' logic in deciding them. Most photographers will be looking for something more practical, like a discussion of what rights to give to someone purchasing or leasing a photograph or what to include in a model release. For photographers looking for this kind of information, John Harrington's " Best Business Practices for Photographers" would be a better choice. Then, if the photographer felt he or she wanted to learn still more about the limited areas covered by the book, this would be an excellent choice.

On the other hand, for those in the image industry like photo buyers and archivists, who are most likely to go astray, this is probably an excellent resource. Wolff's interpretations of the law and the cases seems accurate, to the best of my knowledge, without doing independent due diligence (darn that legal background!) and she reports on current cases. One should be careful however, since many of the most recent cases are still wending their way through the appeals process. And to my delight, she does mention one of my favorite concepts, changing the nature of the photographer's rights by contracts and licenses. Although she doesn't dwell on the topic, she is the only writer on the subject that I've read who mentions this aspect.

This is the first book that truly explains all about cyberlaw, It's easy to read and very educational, doesnt matter if your not that good with the internet you'll still enjoy reading this book that gives you all the information you need on cyberlaw, gives many cases as examples, and explains abrevations! I would recomend this book to anyone trying to understand what really go's on in the law of the world wide web.

This is the first book that truly explains all about cyberlaw, It's easy to read and very educational, doesnt matter if your not that good with the internet you'll still enjoy reading this book that gives you all the information you need on cyberlaw, gives many cases as examples, and explains abrevations! I would recomend this book to anyone trying to understand what really go's on in the law of the world wide web.

This book is required reading for a class I'm taking. The professor mentioned on the first day of class that is it a bit outdated and that there are few books on this new subject, so we were stuck. In reading it I understand now his comments. The first thing that jump out at me is the poor editing. Most legal books, even paralegal books, are competently written, except for this one. I find the argument difficult to follow and the logic seems circular in many instances. I'm fairly well versed with in rem jurisdiction, but had a hard time trying follow the explanation in this book. I'm assuming that it is because it is trying to appeal to an IT crowd as well as those with legal backgrounds. Unfortunately this book ends up doing both poorly. Given that however, it does provide a good general introduction to the topic and a good place to start if you are new to the concept of cyber law as a discipline. Stated another way, its better than nothing.

An very updated text. Concise, precise and well presented. There is no bored and extensive dissertations about what should be the law of internet. This is a pragmatic view. Every topic is well documented and comes with several sugested sites to visit for reference or aditional information. Be aware this is an American Legal System analisys, it does not explores civil law implications. Useful for beginners and advanced legal professionals working in the web industry.

The Generic Challenge should be required reading for every pharmaceutical executive. It is a long overdue prescription for an information gap that many in the pharmaceutical industry suffer from, whether they realize it or not. The book provides a clear and concise explanation of the most significant concepts of patent law and FDA regulatory law and the important ways interact to influence product life-cycle management. It also provides a "big picture" view of the current challenging legal and regulatory environment for the development and commercialization of innovative drugs. It is written in an easy-to-read style and does not overwhelm the reader with endless citations to case law or Federal regulations. The Generic Challenge succeeds in being a basic but extraordinarily useful primer on the interface between pharmaceutical patent law and regulatory issues. It is well worth the price.

The book is concise, witty, understandable by lay and law people alike, and helpful in understanding the difficulties that innovative drug companies face as well as how generics keep the innovators on their toes. Not designed as a treatise (thankfully), it is helpful for someone who wants a quick and readable overview of patents and drug laws and regulations in the U.S. and elsewhere, and how they affect the incentives to develop new drugs. This is well-suited for people who work at drug companies (whether innovator or generic) and among the professionals that serve those companies, not to mention politicians and others who make or influence policy, or anyone who wants to be informed about the facts and policies that underlie the "generic" debate that plays out in the press.

Pages 1-40 disclose some background information relating to patents. Here, the author is plainly uncomfortable with the topic. Pages 41-107 describe various regulations relating to FDA submissions. Here, the writing is somewhat more assured.

On page 14, the author states that "claims tend to get long winded because for some reason lost in the mists of time, there can only be one sentence in each claim, so that [sic] sentence sometimes gets very long." This is false. A basis for single sentence claims is the Patent Act of 1836, but also in a publication from July 1836 called "Information to Persons Having Business to Transact at the Patent Office."

On page 15, the author states that the Seaborg claim is a broad claim. This is false. The Seaborg claim is a species claim (a narrow claim). The Seaborg claim is NOT a genus claim (genus claims are broad claims).

On page 15, the author states that "the broadest patents have the shortest claims." This is not really true. The author forgets that certain extra words, such as "comprising" or "or", are universally used to broaden claims. Again, the author might have described how "comprising language" is used to broaden claims. The author also might have explained how "or language" is used to broaden claims. But nothing is said about these techniques for broadening claims. Note also that what can be broad is a CLAIM in a patent, not the patent itself. From the writing, the reader might infer that the SPECIFICATION determines whether a patent's coverage is broad or narrow. But this is not the case. An author writing for a novice audience should not be using careless phraseology in referring to established, clearly defined concepts.

On page 16, the author tries to describe the Doctrine of Inherency, giving the example of a mechanism of action of a drug. This is a confusing example, because there are really two issues going on in this example: (1) Inherency; and (2) Failure to satisfy the utility requirement (35 USC 101). This is also a bad example because often, when faced with a discovery relating only to mechanisms, the patent attorney might draft a claim reading, "A method to detect this mechanism" or "A method to stimulate this mechanism." For the claim given by the author, when written by an attorney to read "A method to detect this mechanism" or "A method to stimulate this mechanism," only utility is an issue (inherency would no longer be an issue). The author should have used the much better example found in a case from the Federal Circuit, In re Cruciferous Sprouts.

On pages 18-19, the author attempts to explain novelty, utility, and non-obviousness. However, the author only mentions the statute 35 USC 103, and fails to mention 35 USC 102 (novelty) or 35 USC 101 (utility). At this point, it is becoming clear that the "book" is unusually disorganized and inaccurate.

On page 23, the author states that "A patent is a sword, not a shield. . ." This is false. As soon as a patent is filed, it becomes a powerful shield, as it can become prior art under 35 USC 102(e), preventing the allowance of U.S. patents, e.g., of competitors. Morever, as soon as a patent application is published, it also becomes a shield, preventing the allowance European patents, e.g., of a competitor.

On page 28, the author tries to explain the "Function, Way, Result" test. But what a mess the author has made. The author writes, ". . . it might infringe under the doctrine of equivalents because your gizmo has an element that performs a similar function by similar means in a similar way . . ." What happened to "Result"? Where is "Result"? Where? The author is further confused here, because he uses the term "means." In patent law, the term "means" is used to invoke 35 USC 112, paragraph six. The term "means" should not be used when initiating an explanation of the Doctine of Equivalents. Another mess.

On page 31, the author writes, "This is called prosecution history estoppel if you really wanted to know." This type of comment is excessively informal, and is not appropriate for a "book" on patent law.

On page 89, the author states that "The FDA recently approved a combination of two well-known cholesterol lowering statins giving new life to Merck's Zocor by combining it with a newer statin sold by Schering-Plough." This is false. The compound of Schering-Plough is Zetia. But Zetia (Ezetimibe) is not a statin.

This "book" contains only about 30,000 words. This is the length of a typical law review article. At $25.00, this tiny "book" is no bargain. The production could be better. While the quality of the glossy cover is excellent, the ink in my copy of the book is smeared on pages 34, 49, 88, 105, and 108. Citations for cases, and the names of cases, are missing (pages 51, 66, 71, 74).

This "book" contains way too many errors in its attempts to describe various issues in patent law. For this reason, this "book" deserves zero stars.

I read the Generic Challenge in one evening. It is easy to read, anecdotal and short (100 pages). My favorite portions of the book were Chapter 2 (pharmaceutical patenting strategy) and Chapter 7 (drug life-cycle management). It is hard to believe that so much information and seasoned advice is packed into this little book.

Generic Challenge is not written as a reference for experts. Rather, the book is written as an introduction for readers who are new to the field and interested in the topic. Because patents are now so fundamental to the business of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, I would recommend this book to virtually everyone working in those industries regardless of whether you will deal directly with patents.