Summary: Timely new picks of patent news

● Microsoft trying to patent studying evolution

Microsoft filed a patent two years ago for widely used methods for determining evolutionary relatedness, causing disbelief and apprehension among researchers.

● If Your Computer Detects You Laughing At This Patent Drawing, You May Have Infringed On The Patent

ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the news that Sony has applied for a patent on an emotion detection device that could, for example, recognize when someone viewing a television or playing a video game is laughing.

● There Is No Harmony In A Patent Thicket

As China and India are exhorted to increase intellectual property protection and enforcement to higher standards - “harmonization” in the rhetoric of its proponents - they risk emulating the detrimental IP systems of the developed world. The United States, widely viewed as the most innovative nation in the world, has a patent system that has, according to Jaffe, "become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress” (Jaffe 2004). Even more worrying, the trend in international intellectual property is actually speeding past the American level of protection, raising concerns that the incredibly strong IP in countries will diminish, rather than promote, innovative capabilities.