The PR/propaganda industry is one of the least ethical out there (Microsoft has many PR agencies working for it). One common technique in this industry is "controlled opposition", where a company pretends to be its own opposition and therefore it can control how this opposition behaves. Misrepresentation essentially gives the malicious company a straw man to rebut. Let's take an example from last week's news. PR Watch cites the Washington Post, which has uncovered a "Fake 'Consumer' Group" created by big banks.
According to a story in the Washington Post by Mike Konczal, the Big Banks have just created an astroturf or cashroots group called the "Consumers Against Retail Discrimination Alliance" to fight a provision of the financial reform bill: This nominal "consumers" group is constituted of really, really big "consumers," according to Konczal, including "Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, U.S. Bank, Citi" and almost every banking association that is part of the more accurately named "Electronic Payments Coalition." They have attempted to label this a corporate "civil rights" issue by talking about "discrimination" -- or "retail discrimination," that is.
The cost of a European patent is almost five times that in the US and three times the cost in Japan, according to figures from a study by the Association of Competitive Technologies.
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Europe's standard-setting framework must catch up with fast-moving technology markets because standards are vital for interoperability. The Commission will continue the review of European standardisation policy by following up on its White Paper "Modernising ICT standardisation in the EU"18 and the related public consultation. Reflecting the rise and growing importance of ICT standards developed by certain global fora and consortia, one important aim is to allow their use in legislation and public procurement.
Moreover, guidance on transparent ex-ante disclosure rules for essential intellectual property rights and licensing terms and conditions in the context of standardsetting, to be provided in particular in the forthcoming reform of EU standardisation policy as well as in updated antitrust rules on horizontal co-operation agreements, could contribute to lower royalty demands for the use of standards and thus to lower market entry costs.
The chart below is based on Prof. Miller’s data and reports the number of days elapsed from the oral argument to the release of the decision for each case. The average delay is about 90 days (median of 77 days). As seen in the chart, Bilski has the longest delay (and that delay continues to grow). A decision in Bilski is expected by June 28, 2010.
In this particular software patent filing, Apple describes the ability to create a shopping list on the iPhone OS and the software permitting the user to check out electronically.