On Monday, I published a 4300-word account of efforts by the MPAA and its members to undermine negotiations for a new UN treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. (Link here). The same day, Chris Dodd, the CEO of the MPAA, responded,...

From June 17 to 28, 2013, a diplomatic conference will be convened in Marrakesh, Morocco on a new UN treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. Copyright industry lobbies have succeeded in narrowing the scope of the agreement, and a recent lobbying effort by...

I spent hours watching Senator Rand Paul's dramatic and compelling filibuster. Like many others, I had a favorable impression of Senator Paul's views, and was charmed by his modest demeanor and clear and plain-spoken way of talking. Like Senator Harry Reid, I was moved by the strength of Senator Paul's...

Yesterday I received a Samsung laptop computer running Google's Chrome OS. This is the new $249 Chromebook with an SSD drive, 2 gigs of RAM, an 11.6 inch 1366 x 768 pixels screen, and the 1.7 GHz Exynos 5200 processor. The laptop weighs 2.4 pounds and has a nice usable...

How did the market respond to Romney's temporary surge in polling data? And which sectors of the economy expect to do better if Romney is elected? For the companies included in a survey, the share prices for all large banks and large health insurance and managed care providers rose when...

While the GOP and Democratic conventions highlight the differences between the parties, there are some bipartisan issues -- and one of the biggest is taking care of corporate interests.

One example of this is the massive push by PhRMA, BIO and their member companies to have a provision in...

The GOP platform mentions China 15 times, including these passages:

Our serious trade disputes, especially China's failure to enforce international standards for the protection of intellectual property and copyrights, as well as its manipulation of its currency, call for a firm response from a new Republican Administration......

From the department of double standards.

The day before President Obama took the stage to remind everyone of the benefits of the U.S. Affordable Care Act, the USPTO was plotting with Congress on how it can defeat efforts by developing countries to obtain affordable access to drugs for cancer and...

On Wednesday, on behalf of the U.S. government, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office delivered a blistering attack on developing countries use of compulsory licenses for medical patents (Copy of U.S. statement available here.) This what we thought of the USPTO statement:

Rather than the new "not-Romney," Santorum might more usefully be described as the new Gingrich. In the Congress, both candidates were known for their divisive partisan nature. Neither candidate has any real experience or success as an executive. Both candidates come across as amateur pop historians. Both candidates have a...

Its over. Fairly strong performance by Romney. Huntsman sounded like a candidate, and maybe he will begin to attract more attention. Gingrich came across as more shallow and more arrogant than I expected. Perry with a weak outing now drifting in to the B list of candidates, which includes Bachmann,...

Steve Jobs had a great sense of what hardware and software could do. My mother, in her 90s, can use her Apple laptop and tablet to check her Facebook page. I know countless people who were both terrible or great at the geekier side of computing that fell in love...

Like many others, I have spent the past several days combing through countless US Department of State cables. I am primarily looking at the cables that describe our government's efforts to drive up the price of medicine in developing countries. This is an act of state-sponsored violence that is rarely...

The announcement this morning that Google wants to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobile -- for its patent portfolio, is just the latest evidence the patent system is not working. The issue that Google is struggling with is a common one. Some complex products, like mobile phones,...

Beginning Wednesday, June 15, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) the specialized UN agency for intellectual property, begins nine days of negotiations on possible copyright treaties. The first three days will be spent on a proposed treaty on exceptions to copyright for persons who are blind or have other...

It must by now be obvious that people in politics have sex, outside of the conventional and sometimes puritanical values presented to the voters. Any list of political love affairs, casual affairs, paid sex, risky or kinky sex, flirtations, same gender sex and multiple marriages would be long, and relatively...

On April 19, 2011, Dr Kumariah Balasubramaniam died at his home in Sri Lanka. He was 84-years-old. Known to consumer rights community simply as Dr. Bala, or Bala, he was a towering figure in the public health community, and he will be missed by his family, friends and professional colleagues....

When President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, he said "the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden," but very little else regarding the details of that death. Conflicting news reports have created some confusion over the circumstances of the...

A lot of people are speculating about Keith Olbermann's future, now that the NBC/Comcast merger and his departure from MSNBC have been announced. Depending upon how you look at things, Olbermann is (a) an enormous talent (b) pompous (c) brilliant (d) a powerful voice for social...

Like many readers of Huffpost, I was deeply moved by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, but disappointed and surprised by some of what followed during his first two years in office. With little experience and no real record of achievement or identification with a particular case, Obama...