NAME THAT DUCK! THE BIDDING RISES; SILENT ON SOFTWARE PATENTS

Name that duck! The bidding rises ...

Readers will recall that, at last month's Stephen Stewart Memorial Lecture, Isabel Davies bought a rubber duck, autographed by Andrew Gowers. In order to raise money for that worthy organisation and registered charity the Intellectual Property Institute, Isabel kindly entrusted that duck to the IPKat with instructions to auction the right to name it.

As of this very moment the bidding now stands at £105. Surely the right to name this charming, innominate duck is worth more than that! Come on, send the IPKat your bids by email to theipkat@yahoo.co.uk. Bidding closes on Friday 15 December at 2pm GMT.


Silent on software patents

Cristian Miceli (Lawyers Against Software Patents), noting that the IPKat's note on the Gowers Review made no mention of its statement on software patents, has emailed to draw the Kat's attention to his thoughts on the report as far as software patents are concerned.

The IPKat's note, inevitably, was always going to be superficial and highly selective, given that there was going to be an avalanche of comment on it and he didn't see that there was much to be gained from deep, analytical focus on this technical and controversial issue. Note for readers: Gowers was set the task of reviewing the entirety of intellectual property and publishing its report in less than a year, reviewing nearly 500 submissions in the process and coming up with nearly 60 proposals. Whatever it was going to say about software patents was always going to be a cop-out under those circumstances.

Merpel agrees, reminding readers that the real issue is not software patents as such, but the intricate web of patent, copyright, confidentiality, DRM, encryption, distribution, market power and consumer conservatism that can serve to inhibit or blot out effective competition in in software innovation.