#20054
Bearing the Burden: Small Firms and the Patent System 
The popular conception of the patent system is one of mad inventors with ludicrous inventions and equally absurd expectations that the product of their years of pottering in the garden shed will change the world. Precisely the same system is the bulwark of strategy in some of the world's most powerful companies, notoriously in the pharmaceutical industry, but now also in the world's IT industry. Can the one instrument serve such diverse purposes? Certainly those for whom the patent system is of critical strategic importance think so for they frequently declare that it benefits the independent inventor and the small firm. They insist that the patent system encourages the innovation of the weak as well as the strong, and that society is much the richer for this innovation. This article considers just who does benefit from the patent system and then turns to the other side of the coin, the costs of the patent system. Most discussion of the system seems not so much to deny the existence of costs as to ignore them. Yet, the costs would seem to be considerable and their distribution as uneven as that of the benefits. Those who reap most benefits from the patent system are not those who incur most costs, and while benefits are finely focussed, costs are much more widely distributed. The greatest cost of all would seem to be borne by society as a whole in terms of damage done to innovation, which is curious given that the fundamental purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation for the benefit of society as a whole.
Macdonald, Stuart. JILT (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Patents
#22231
Contracts: An Introduction to the Skills of Legal Writing and Analysis
Contracts is a computer program designed for first year undergraduates studying Obligations in Glasgow University's School of Law, written by Paul Maharg and Professor Joe Thomson. It aims to improve students' written work.
#20063
Iolis Authoring in a Web Environment
Recently, there has been increasing focus on the acquisition of research skills by law undergraduates. One reason for this interest is a belief that many such students do not acquire an adequate level of research skills by the time that they graduate. Reflecting this concern, the Law Society/Bar Council's Joint Statement on Qualifying Law Degrees and the Quality Assurance Agency's Benchmark Standards for Law both place great emphasis on the need to improve research skills training at University level. In the light of these developments, Durham University's Centre for Law and Computing was asked to develop a self-paced learning package providing more advanced training on the skills necessary to do legal research projects. It was envisaged that the learning package in question would take the form of an Iolis style workbook. Rather than use traditional law courseware authoring tools, however, the Centre chose to experiment by attempting from the outset to develop the workbook as a website comprising interlaced text and interactions. If successful, such an approach would have the benefits of producing a prototype that was: (i) readily accessible across the Internet, or a campus intranet; (ii) customisable to the needs of individual law schools; (iii) flexible enough to reflect more of an author's own personal approach; and (iv) massively interconnectable with campus intranets and with the Internet at large.
Widdison, Robin. JILT (2002). Articles>Education>Legal>Online
#20053
Much Pain for Little Gain? A Critical View of Software Patents
The question whether access to patent protection for computer software should be made easier (for example by removing the restrictions that would allow a classification of computer programs 'as such' as inventions) would be in the overall benefit has exercised policy makers for quite some time. 'Better protection' of software-related innovations (compared to copyright protection) as well as 'better disclosure' of the underlying ideas and principles have been cited as the main benefits. This paper takes a critical view of these arguments, taking into account that in many cases the underlying ideas and principles may be most effectively be protected as trade secrets (in combination with copyright protection of the 'expression', i.e. the computer program as it is made available to the user). Giving software producers the option to apply for patent protection may not make much difference in terms of the information generated for the benefit of other innovators. Patent protection may be most attractive for ideas and principles that are to a large extent obvious or become apparent to the user. This might lead to a raft of patents for rather obvious 'inventions' (even if patent office searches were improved and patent applications were assessed more rigorously), which might cause little benefit but much friction in the process of innovation.
Koboldt, Christian. JILT (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Patents>Software
#20064
Personal Identifiability in the Icelandic Health Sector Database
Personal identifiability is a fundamental question in the ongoing debate about the Icelandic Bill and Act on the Health Sector Database (HSD). If the data are personally identifiable, Iceland's international legal commitments indicate that a priori consent must be obtained from patients for the use of their personal medical information. The HSD Act presumes that one-way coding of personal identifiers renders the data non-personally identifiable and that therefore a priori consent is not required. The history of the debate on the HSD shows that the concept of personal identifiability was initially based on a notion of 'considerable amount of time and manpower' as a criterion for defining personal identifiability. This definition comes from Recommendation R(97)5 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on Medical Data. As a result of the Icelandic Data Protection Commission's opinion on the HSD, that concept was rejected and the resulting Bill and HSD Act adopted a definition from the European Data Protection Directive (95/46). The rejected concept, however, reentered with the idea that one-way coding of personal identifiers means there is no key that can be used to trace the identity of a person in the database. The question of what constitutes a key in this context is of fundamental importance. The database will collect and link data from different sources on individuals over time and therefore the method of coding must remain stable. It is possible therefore to construct a look-up table, which constitutes a key. Keys can also be built from comparisons of patterns of family trees as well as by putting generally available information into context The information in the Health Sector Database is personal information. Therefore reason and justice require that a priori consent be obtained from patients for the transfer of their health data to the database as Iceland's international legal obligations stipulate. Anything less is unreasonable and unjust.
Arnason, Einar. JILT (2002). Articles>Information Design>Biomedical
#20052
Public Key Infrastructure Digital Signatures and Systematic Risk
The last few years have seen very considerable developments in the networks and technologies of electronic commerce, matched by the promotional and regulatory initiatives of international and national government towards electronic commerce. Of particular note have been the technological and regulatory developments in relation to public key cryptography and digital signatures. These regulatory developments arguably represent a promotion of an emerging Public Key Infrastructure as an international open network infrastructure for digital signature authorisation in electronic commerce. However, over the same period concerns have been growing in other international open network infrastructures, such as banking and finance, that such strongly inter-connected and inter-dependent infrastructures may be subject to systematic risk. Indeed, it appears that vulnerability to systematic risk is a characteristic of any complex open network. Therefore, the question can be posed whether the emerging Public Key Infrastructure is also vulnerable to systematic risk.
Murray, Jamie. JILT (2003). Articles>Communication>Open Source>Security
#20045
There are many legal issues currently raised by the growth in e-commerce and e-learning, but one of the least discussed is that of Web accessibility. As a result of the increased use of proprietary technologies and a failure to follow guidelines when designing Web sites a large percentage of the Internet remains inaccessible to many parts of the disabled community. As a result, the effect has been to exclude a significant section of the population from fully benefiting and participating in the increased use and reliance on e-commerce and e-learning. The purpose of this paper is to explore, in light of events and experiences elsewhere in the world, whether and to what extent the disability rights legislation in the UK might apply in such a scenario. It also considers the effect of the recent Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 on the previously excluded area of education.
Sloan, Martin. JILT (2003). Design>Accessibility>Web Design>United Kingdom
