Summary: New examples of insanely dangerous ownership of ideas

FOUND IN Fox 'news' was this report about ownership of ideas.

A North Carolina man who allegedly cracked the code to mentally calculate any multiplication problem is now offering to reveal his secret - for the bargain price of $33.

That would be a similar thing to patenting of algorithms and business methods. These are ideas that can be applied mentally (or with pen and paper), as they require no manufacturing of anything physical.

The Wall Street Journal also has this short piece about attempts by 'pharmonopolies' to ban their competition. [via]

India plans to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that the European Union allowed big pharmaceutical companies to use the bloc's tough patent laws to have national customs agencies detain generic drugs in transit to developing countries, according to India's commerce secretary.

This falls under a class of patents that simply kill or monetise deaths [1, 2, 3].

“This falls under a class of patents that simply kill or monetise deaths.”Groklaw has this detailed analysis of a story where "Pfizer's lawyers hired a detective who ended up intimidating a witness the day before he was due to testify..."

Shades of Microsoft, as we noted before. They are like a group of gangsters who see themselves as magically pardoned by the law, so they bully their possible opponents without a challenge. Steve Stites said a few days ago: "In my case there is the little problem that Microsoft spent approximately 18 months stalking me."

Those commonalities between Microsoft and the pharmaceutical cartel should not be entirely surprising. Taking also lobbying into account, there's this new article about Merck's role in the problem. ⬆

"It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care."

--Paul Farmer