Intellectual Property Books

This was my first stop to decode topics I didn't understand because it's so easy to read. But this book is better for an IP survey course than for a standalone patent, copyright, or trademark class. For those, I had to look to additional study aids to cover the topics well.

This book has pretty good coverage of topics: Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks, Trade Secrets.

The information is pretty complete, but could be organized better.

My main complaint is that there is no table of cases. This is a pretty serious ommission from a law book. No table of statutes, either. And the index is pretty sucky too - no entries for "cybersquatting", "GATT", "Licensing", "genericide" - I won't go on, but I could.

Well the valuation studies were interesting, but only up to a point. A patent holder isn't that interested in what patents are worth in the aggregate, the only thing that matters is how much an individual patent is worth. It's like talking about worldwide corn prices, when all I care about is how much my gallon of milk is worth.

One thing that annoyed me to no end is the harping on the E-Data case. Yes, we get it, the authors don't like software patents, but they should have come up with different examples. Actually, the case is not as bad as the authors make it seem. The definitions used by the court were not pulled from thin air but expert testimony and the specification of the patent. The authors over-rely on this case as a mistake, but it wasn't that baseless.

Another shortcoming is that they authors don't even mention (as far as I can remember) the MOST IMPORTANT patent case for the next few decades - the KSR decision. That came down in April of 2007 and it should have been discussed in this book from March 2008. This is especially so since obviousness standards are incorrect according to the authors. I guess the opinion undermined some of the authors objections so they just ignored it.

Overall the book is not a bad read, but the last few chapters where solutions are discussed are bare on the details. Asking the PTO to issue clearance opinions may be a good idea, but the details of this scheme are extremely important. Most likely if they thought it through, they would realize that if something is hard and expensive for a private attorney to do, it is impossible for the government to do. Also, if the specialized court of appeals is so bad, why are they asking for specialized district courts. The book would have been more worthwhile if there was more analysis of their suggestions, but still the work is worthwhile.

Anyone inclined to read this book should just ignore its subtitle -- "How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators At Risk." I can only imagine that was thrown in to make this book appeal to right-wingers. Which is really strange, come to think of it: the book is sedate, scholarly, reasoned, and exhaustive, and if anything it will appeal to readers who enjoy Larry Lessig and Richard Posner. In no way do Bessen and Meurer suggest that the system be scrapped and those "Judges, Bureaucrats and Lawyers" be thrown out. In the world Bessen and Meurer desire, "bureaucrats" will still examine patent claims; lawyers will still prepare patent applications; and judges will still hear infringement claims. Bessen and Meurer want to change policies here and there to make the system more efficient, but it will still be the same system by the time they're done.

The dispute over patents has become rancorous in the era of the Internet, with lots of loud people asking that it be torn down, lots of other people claiming that the first group are unwitting pawns of big business, etc. Bessen and Meurer avoid almost all of that. Their claim is straightforward, and avoids all the parts of the debate that are unnecessary for establishing their point -- which is simply this: that as a system of property, there are certain things we should expect of a patent system. That is, just as real property gives you certain rights over, say, a parcel of land, and the right to exclude ne'er-do-wells from that land, so a patent is a legal right to exclude people from using your invention. And there are certain things that we should expect of patents, just as we would expect them from property law. First among these is notice: it should be easy to determine whether you've trespassed on my land, and just as easy to determine whether you've violated my patent.

In a system where notice is working perfectly, we'd expect very few patent-infringement lawsuits. In some fields, say Bessen and Meurer, that's exactly what we see: the chemical and pharmaceutical industries have very low rates of infringement, because comparing your small molecule to a patented small molecule is easy. When the product gets more complex and abstract -- as with a computer algorithm -- deciding whether you've infringed gets more and more difficult, and the number of suits balloons.

Still, if lawsuits to defend against infringement claims were cheap enough, patents would be a net economic positive: the cost of lawyers when you accidentally infringe would be less than the money you bring in from non-infringing patented technologies. By this measure, Bessen and Meurer say that patents stopped being a net economic positive -- outside of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries -- in the mid-nineties.

In support of their conclusions, they use an arsenal of statistical methods based on the stock prices of public companies. Everyone knows the defects in using the stock market to infer knowledge, and Bessen and Meurer are not fools. Still, the most reliable data they could find were stock-price data, on which they conducted event studies to determine what value the market attached to particular patents and infringement lawsuits. Absent any data from lawyers or companies about how much they're charging or paying, this is probably the best one could hope for.

Their second method of estimating value is to study rates of patent renewal. 20% of patents expire after four years; 21% expire after eight; 17% expire after 12; and 42% last the full 17-year term. Based on the cost of renewing, we can estimate how much the owner values the patent. Seeing that 58% of patents expire by their 12th year, and that $2,327 in renewal fees will have been due by then, we can estimate that the median patent is worth less than $2,500. Similar, but obviously more sophisticated, analyses are spread throughout Patent Failure; they constitute its bulk.

Bessen and Meurer blame the decreasing value of patents on a number of different factors. One is the rise of software and business-method patents, which are inherently abstract. They give a fascinating account of the Karmarkar patent, which covers a certain interior-point method for solving linear-programming problems. Years after Karmarkar obtained his patent, mathematicians discovered that the Karmarkar algorithm was formally identical to another that had been been in wide use for years. This sort of equivalence is much more likely for an abstract patent such as one governing a mathematical algorithm, and makes knowing ahead of time whether you've infringed that much more difficult. Abstraction harms the notice function of patents, hence harms their functioning as property.

They sidestep any number of other questions, such as the cost of "patenting around" -- that is, developing new technologies only because existing technologies are all patented. Adding in these costs would likely only help their case, though one would have to crank through the numbers to be sure.

My only concern about this book is its subtitle. If I were to issue a second edition, I would drop the populist-sounding subtitle and rename it to what it really is: "A Calm Look At The Evidence."

This is a legal text. It is written for persons with a legal education. Viewed in the proper perspective, it is an excellent one-volume introduction to the topic and a handy deskside reference text. I would recommend it

A turgid writing style which is excellantly referenced but difficult to read. Good reference on where to find that appropriate case, but find a book with a better writing style for extensive study. This book is not for the non-lawyer novice, but would function for the lawyer wanting to know more about patent law. It is bound in a ring binder suggesting it may be updated easily, but the binder is difficult to hold and doesn't stay open without excessive manual encouragement, which is distracting.

When Judge Richard Posner first called himself and other legal academics "intellectual entrepreneurs," he was at least half-kidding (in a Chicago kind of way). But in recent years the "market" for legal scholarship has become among the most cutthroat in the world. Professors seem desperate to be the first to homestead new territory in any emerging market.

The work of economists like Edward Castronova has demonstrated that virtual worlds constitute a new frontier, ripe for cutting edge scholarship. The authors in this book are staking their claim to its legal issues. But just being the first to a topic does not mean you have anything interesting to say about it. Castronova's work is interesting, but you don't need this book to understand it. The remaining essays in this book reminded me of cyber-squatted domain names. "What will happen?" they all seem to ask, but they don't offer many answers or even interesting speculations.

The real problem here is that law exists to dealing with real-world consequences, while virtual worlds exist to eliminate them. Law may eventually get some traction in virtual reality, but it hasn't happened yet. If you want to be there when it does, don't read a law book - get yourself into a MMPORG. Just don't plan on keeping your job or your marriage.

Great book, interesting essays about where our digital lives are going.

This is a terrific guide that tells writers at all levels what they need to know to avoid legal problems and negotiate successfully. It has the broadest coverage and is clearly written with many cases turned into fascinating and eduational anecdotes. I can't recommend it too highly.

I am about to be a published author. (scheduled for the summer of 2000) My hero is William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well. I like him because he writes so...well. Mr. Crawford needs to read Zinsser's book-several times. To be fair, Mr. Crawford's Legal Guide is organized and thorough, but the wording is stiff and technical. I feel as though I am reading a college law (or business) text book. He has no humor. I have an urge to drag out my yellow highlighter because there will be a test later. I am convinced I can read about anything if the material is well written. Mr. Crawford is always grammatically correct, but I have to work too hard to understand him. Legal Guide would be a wonderful book if you have a background in law or business. Since I have neither, I recommend Bunnin and Berens, The Writer's Legal Companion. The style is friendlier for new authors who lack experience in the business of contracts, copyright and publishing.

In my opinion, this book emphasized history and historical cases too much. While I believe empirical data are important for evaluating economic theory, I thought this book went overboard. Also, I found it annoying that many relevant facts to example problems (e.g., marginal costs) were not conveniently displayed near the graph, but rather, hidden somewhere within the text describing the example. Similarly, it would sometimes present important conclusions in the form of block quotes from authoritative figures, which can be useful for some purposes, but is usually just annoying. All in all, I wouldn't say this book is horrible, but I think there are probably better alternatives available.

Economics of Regulation and Antitrust offers a broad conclusion on Regulation and Antitrust policies. The issues are well described and easily to understand. Best suited for graduate students in Economics.

If you are looking for a nonconsistant book that jumps around and does not follow through on its explanation of certain topics than this is the book for you!

This read like a math book with a few interesting facts. I was dumbfouned by reading this book. I would get to class and my professor would explain things using the same examples from the book and I would understand. The book is impossible to follow. It will give you a million variables and different numbers to think about, and then later expect you to remember something it briefly mentioned two paragraphs ago. If you can learn from reading a math book and no class room instruction; I not only would like to meet you but hand you this book. You would probably love it and understand antitrustlaw and regulation as well as the douches at MIT that wrote the thing.

Seldom books on economic theory, particularly on regulation and antitrust are as clearly and professionally written as this one. A student of economics and Ph.D. hopeful, I keep this book within my hand reach at all times.
Economics of Regulation and Antitrust cites numerous antitrust and regulatory cases from American and European history and is thought provoking rather than doctrinal. The graphs are exceptionally easy to read and understand. Particularly well written are chapters on regulation of American transportation.
I continue to use this book for my research and highly recommend it to anybody who is seriously interested in understanding the logic behind regulation acts, game theory, and franchise bidding.

The importance of ideas can't be overemphasized and that is why Graham's book is a must-read for all executives, managers and consultants. This book breaks down the essential process of ideation in a organized and interesting fashion.
After reading this book I have gained a thorough understanding of the nature of innovation and I plan to put it to practical use!

I think this is a really good book. I enjoyed reading the truth of what goes on in working America. For everyone of us out there who has had an idea, we deserve to shine instead of letting the darkness take hold of them or even worst having another reap from our ideas.

The book has a great title, but the content is poor!!
It deals with generality and lacks depth and with no data to backup statements made. Worse of all, when I check the existence of "Innovation Trust", one of the author claims to be the first bank to manage intellectual assets, in which he serves as CEO.
As it turns out, the "bank" does not exist, I only find "Circle Trust Company", a trust company which offer 401K mutual fund, self-directed brokerage opinion, and custody and trust services. According to Connecticut state report it has assets of $3.45 millions. No information talks about intangible/patnet assets with Circle Trust and the billions of IP assets. What a disappointment!

The biggest load of hogwash I have ever read! This book is virtually devoid of the very title that it claims to be analyzing - ideas. Borrows shamefully from every little management cliche that every high-school grader already knows about, talks about ideas and spins them into stories that only PR spin-masters can appreciate, this is a book meant for the trash - the one original idea left

Street thieves are incarcerated and corporate thieves are rewarded in our society. I have read Professor Perelman's book "Steal This Idea" twice and feel I am just coming to grips with the silent government running our country. Corporate America is the enemy of democracy through its donations to elected officials, retainers to influential Washington law firms, and its control of our media.

Dwight D. Eisenhower stated, "Every step we take toward making the State the caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our master." Corporations have merged to purge Americans of their wealth, creativity, and civil rights. Professor Perelman is to be commended for his exposition "How Intellectual Property Rights Enrich the Few While Undermining Liberty, Science, and Society." Read this book and you will learn how your civil rights and your freedom are slipping away rapidly.

I also bought five books for friends, as I didn't want them to be walking around in a fog not knowing what we have become as a nation. Karl Marx wrote, "In the valley of the blind with one eye you can be king." We are in the valley. Read the book, wake up, and be your own king.

Perelman catalogs a litany of injustices (perceived and real) associated with intellectual property. The injustices themselves are fairly interesting, but Perelman's analysis is shrill and unashamedly biased - every case builds into his thesis that intellectual property is evil and must be replaced...

But this is the biggest problem with the book - 150 pages of criticism of the system that builds to a crescendo of NOTHING. At the end of the book he reveals that he doesn't have any idea of how the system could be improved or what it could be replaced with; even an implausible or unworkable suggestion would be better than none at all.

In the end I was left disappointed but not altogether unsurprised.

Why does our property rights system grant huge sums of money to people who did nothing to create the knowledge that is the source of their wealth? Should so-called "private" corporations be allowed to make hundreds of millions of dollars off Federal and State court cases? Should workers be thrown in jail for filing patents in ideas that the companies they've worked at have ignored as unworthy of consideration for patenting?

These kinds of issues strain our sense of just what property is and as Michael Perelman shows in his clearly written text full of actual yet surreal economic events, the US, indeed the global community of nations, is in dire need of a serious rethinking of property rights in knowledge information and natural resources if we are to avoid the litigatory nuthouse.

Professor Perelman also notes that without a cultural rethink inequalities of income, wealth and power will, in all probability, get even worse, with tragic repercussions for democracy, liberty and the production of future knowledge as well.

By investigating scores and scores of episodes from economic history, both recent and remote, Professor Perelman also shows that was has traditionally been called a free market is in fact a legal oxymoron, as well as inconsistent with what we now know from economic and political theory. As such his book holds important lessons regarding what kinds of questions we need to be asking in all seriousness regarding how our modes of organizing work and citizenship may actually stifle freedom and creativity in producing and distributing knowledge and information.

In an era when genomes, ecosystems and algorithms are being commodified and appropriated at such a frenzied pace, we would do well to ask as many questions as possible about who shall benefit and who will be burdened. All in all, a must read.

I practice patent law, and believe there needs to be a serious reconsideration of intellectual property rights and economic incentives for research in this country.

Unfortunately, I cannot take this book seriously, and will return it rather than finish reading it. In reading perhaps 30 pages of the book, I noted quite a number of basic errors or mischaracterizations of patent laws and the basic mechanics of obtaining patents.

Perhaps he has some good arguments to make about IP rights. I might even agree with some of them. However, he has either failed to do his legal research properly or he has deliberately mischaracterized patent laws. Either way, his credibility is shot with me.

While preparing for a negotiation the objective is to identify risks and rewards. The point of the negotiation is to capture value while finding terms value-enhancing to all parties.

Richard Razgaitis combines Real Option Analysis and Monte Carlo Analysis to provide practical tools and procedures. Used properly, these models will provide data that will assure quick, predictable and reasonable outcomes.

There are only 3 out of 12 pertinent chapters of this book. The other 9 chapters are an extraneous rambling to take up space on paper. The author even goes as far in this irrelevant material to discuss topics such as art collecting. The pertinent chapters are not useful because of misapplied theory. For example, the author does not present the Black-Scholes methodology correctly and improperly defines profitability of an "in-the-money" option. To me this is a marketing ploy through Decisioneering.

I recommend books by Johnathan Mun, Robert Hull, Richard Brealey, and the CBOT.

The title made buying the book interesting, but I was kind of disappointed when I purchased the book. For someone with a good quantitative background or some real experience dealing with real options and monte carlo simulation, this book would prove to be frustrating. It takes shortcuts by using (to the point of promoting) the Crystal Ball software by Decisioneering. Unfortunately, the book doesn't come with a trial software of Crystal Ball like some other real options books, so you only have to rely on the pictures in the book. Aside from this, the discussion of many topics is very watered-down. The author doesn't go in too much depth, and there is not much takeaway from this book. I suggest buying a different book for your needs.

Since the authors are economists I was hoping for an economic analysis of our current patent system like Schiff in his "Industrialization without National Patents" does for the international patent system of the 1800s. Instead it is a work of persuasion meant to sell the author's policy suggestions.

This means that the authors spend a lot of time talking about silly granted patents even though the authors later admit such patents are pretty unavoidable. No patent office has the resources to avoid granting some bad patents.

The author's policy suggestions include a revised reexamination system where patent owners would have to post $50,000 bond to defend a reexamination. I am no phyllis schlafly, but such a system would really favor big companies.

The authors are right that the creation of the CAFC in 1982 has resulted in a strengthening of patents. A lot of this is just a result of a new post-1982 uniformity in the case law.

Some signs of the waning of patents are showing. The CAFC, and now the supreme court, are ruling more for defendants in patent lawsuits. Additionally, in the patent office, the allowance rate of patents has declined from a peak of 71% in 2000 to 54% in 2006.

This book presents a clear, concise and convincing argument that subtle changes in U.S. laws starting in 1982 have broken a patent system that was working reasonably well until then. It will be more effective at convincing the average person than most other attempts have been, both because of its style and because it shows that the changes which broke the system shouldn't have been expected to help anyone other than patent lawyers. Their analysis will be useful in helping to avoid the takeover of other agencies by special interests.
Their description of how the system should be fixed is less impressive. Their summary of proposed changes strangely fails to include undoing the change in appeals court jurisdiction which they suggest was a primary cause of the problems. Their argument in favor of patenting software, business practices, etc. is more radical than they seem to realize, as it appears to imply that patents should also be extended to mathematical theorems, yet they act as if the burden of proof should be on their critics.
Their confidence that a traditional patent system is better than no patents is unconvincing (but they do a good job of explaining why it is hard to know what the best system is). They support their position by a few examples such as Xerox, whose copier wouldn't have been invented as it was without patent protection. But it's much harder than they imply to determine that a copier wouldn't have been invented some other way a few years later.

Begining with unsupported assertions about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and overblown conclusions about the consequences of changes in funding for the Patent and Trademark Office, the authors offer cures for diseases they do not understand.

I haven't seen or heard it much lately, but, when I grew up, "patent medicine" was synonymous with quackery and worthless nostrums. It is, indeed, ironic that they chose that very term to head the section in which they set out the goals of their book.