In through the outfield

He stole my idea – what can I do about it? – Workshop

I’m still catching up on my notes from some of the events I attended during a manic Global Entrepreneurship Week  (GEW) at The British Library.

Although somewhat sexist in tone, He stole my idea – what can I do about it? really caught my attention. It was presented by Denise Nurse, the co-founder of Halebury one of our partners providing legal advice.  They aim to make law more accessible to everyone, in particular start-ups and medium sized companies.

Here are my notes from the workshop:

1.      What is Intellectual Property?

1. Ideas are not protected until you do something with it. It has to turned into something tangible.
2. Often compared to physical property. You wouldn’t buy a house without research and professional advice. Once purchased you need to maintain and develop it in order to protect or increase its value.
3. You need to identify the various aspects of IP in the manifestation of your idea:

-       Copyright – automatically covers any creative output, but you need to prove you did it first.

-       Trademarks – your unique identifier for you business. Can be registered for ten years with the Intellectual Property Office or the EU for a Community Mark. Start with business name, might want to include your strap line. Need to develop a strategy, but budgetary restrictions are often a factor. If you have an established brand which can not be registered as it is descriptive you can use the ‘passing off’ laws to gain some protection.

-       Patents – a long, complicated and expensive process. Covers an inventive process. Must be completely new and secret, but if successful gives you a monopoly for 20 years. Can be licensed to others.

-       Designs – often overlooked, but relatively cheap and easy to register. Covers the shape of something and how it fits with something else. Does not have to be registered, but this gives more protection.

-       Database rights – relate to the organisation of information. Protection from staff walking away with customer lists etc.

-       Confidential information – take time to ensure you have the correct confidentiality agreement. How long will it need to last? Who does it cover? Be careful using standard agreements found on the internet.

2.      How is IP Infringed?

1. Copy, publish, distribute
2. Sell, rent, lend
3. Produce, manufacture
4. Perform, broadcast
5. Adapt

3.      What is the Damage?

1. Music industry claims 20% lost income due to piracy.
2. Your reputation can be damaged – e.g. counterfeit goods which are poor quality
3. Money – loss of IP eats into your income.
4. Dilution of rights – e.g. by allowing its use to become generic you lose the value of your rights such as a trade mark.
5. Weakened commercial position – will have an impact on potential partners, licence agreements.

4.      Protection = Preparation and Perception

1. Mark and / or register – e.g. use copyright symbol.
2. Insure – a growing field, especially in the field of products and patenting. Can cover legal fees to attack or defend from attack. Can help when going for investment.
3. Monitor use – the IPO do not act as IP police. You have to check. Not difficult these days with the internet and search engines. Some trade mark attorneys offer this service.
4. Take swift action – very important not to hang about, but don’t act rashly, get legal advice.
5. Follow through – do you have the resources to follow up on original letter? Nine times out ten the initial letter and demands within it will work. In some cases your trade association can provide support.
6. Make an example of someone who is blatantly abusing your IP.
7. Get warranties from third parties you are working with.

5.      What if someone is infringing your IP?

1. Identify
2. Gather evidence – such as witness statements.
3. Get insurance – can be bought after the event.
4. Call a lawyer – better if you already have a relationship and they know you IP situation.
5. Contact the infringer
6. Make a claim
7. Notify the authorities – some acts are illegal in addition to civil. E.g. counterfeiting goods.
8. Settlement agreement – you may be able to work out a licensing deal.

6.      Defences – anticipating

1. Dispute ownership or title – prove the IP is yours. E.g. in the film world need to ensure all aspects are covered.
2. License to use – check the small print of original documentation.
3. Lack of knowledge – if your work is not widely available it is possible the infringers have not copied your work, although they will still be in breach of your IP.
4. Rights have expired or have been exhausted – can be a geographical factor.
5. Jurisdiction – disputes may be taking place in other locations.
6. Acquiescence – you haven’t used your registered trade mark for too long.

7.      What will you win?

1. Stop infringement
2. Seize copies
3. Account for profits – example of Brats dolls dispute with Matel – $100 damages.
4. Damages
5. Criminal sanctions – e.g. Pirate Bay founders

8.      Practical steps

1. Set up processes
2. Keep an up to date record of your IP – don’t forget to renew trademarks
3. Document your agreements
4. Monitor the market place – be aware of IP use and trends in your market area.
5. Build an aggressive reputation – lessons learnt from working for Rupert Murdoch.
6. Publicising your success – e.g. when you make an example of an infringer.
7. Research and take advice – sometimes you will need professional advice, build this into your plan.
8. Have a strategy – always worth going through your IP assets even at a late stage.

 Audience comment: “For most companies ethics is a small county in the south east of England.”

In conversation with Lord Sugar

Tonight was definitely one of the highlights of Global Entrepreneurship Week for me. Our event in the British Library conference centre In conversation with Lord Sugar was full to bursting.

As time is short and it is now after midnight, I am going to post my notes of his gems and leave it at that.

Is now a good time to be setting up a new business?
Lord Sugar’s route into business was by learning business skills by working in a company and then applying these to his new business.

He is concerned that people wake up one day and decide to start a business, but don’t have the relevant skills or experience to make a go of it.

Opportunities currently exist in the property market if you have the money, but the banks will not be interested in lending.

His move into computers was a natural development of his business selling transistor radios, rather than a revolutionary move.

What is the best piece of business advice he has ever taken?
He used his bank as a barometer in his early days in the 1960’s to find out how fast he could and should develop. This is in contrast to more recent times when the banks give too easily and freely.

He encourages youngsters to start small with their own money and grow from there.

I have not been very successful in investing in the property market. I took all the money I earned from technology and put it into safe and boring properties. There was no rocket science in what I did.

What do you think about MBA’s in entrepreneurship
You can’t train entrepreneurs, you either have the spirit or you don’t. Business training is important but not a substitute for an entrepreneurial spirit.

Has reading business books been useful?
No, not really, I last used one for a wobbly table.

How important is a business plan?
The key point is the business idea any good. For instance if it is a service it is all about the quality of the person providing the service. No excel spreadsheet is magically going to make it work.

There is no point of any business support unless the idea is any good.

How important are work teams?
The team found Lord Sugar rather than vice versa.

Tell us about challenging periods and mistakes made.
Over 40 years in business made less mistakes than good decisions. You learn by your mistakes. He encourages young business to do a weekly health check. What has gone right this week and what has gone wrong?

How do you use sweat equity?
I’m a thick bloke from Hackney, so keep it simple. I don’t understand what you are talking about.

Advice on partnerships
When you need to add a level of expertise to your business you can either add a partner or find a suitable employee.

Can government employees give help to small business when they read them from a computer screen?
Business Links centres have the tools to take some of the burden away from business people with practical advice on employment law, tax regulations etc. They are not giving business advice, but practical help.

Common attributes for entrepreneurial spirit?
(Exasperated) I wish someone would give me an answer to this one.

Have you had a mentor?
Yes. In my business career my mentors were people I aspired to. In my family there was only my uncle. Later on my supplier of electrical equipment became my mentor. Grew beyond them on to the likes of Lord Weinstock at GEC and Rupert Murdoch. Looked, listened and tried to replicate what they were doing.

The role of PR
Differentiates the role of business PR and personal PR. Editorial on a product or service is worth more than advertising. Has a lot to do with connections with media. PR companies who don’t specialise are not as successful as the ones that don’t.

Selling and the art of closing a deal
I the person running the business is not a good sales person then why are they in business. This is another art that can’t really be taught. If you can’t do it, employ someone who is.

How do you like people to communicate in Business?
Very openly in my place, everybody shares the story and knows what is going on.

I admire people who have reached contentment with their lives and know how to enjoy themselves.

How challenging have you found this new Business Champion role?
This is not a challenge, I’m not looking for a headache. I won’t don’t it if I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to give something back to young people

Do you invest outside of the UK?
We have in the past with electronics. I don’t have any at the moment. There are problems with investing in Africa. It is a difficult market. It needs some African entrepreneurs to create the new markets and some business traffic.

What is the main cause of the 95% of business start-up failures.
Should do a weekly health check. Immediately you know where you business is going. Do not lose track of the basics. Do the simple maths every week.

How do we encourage an enterprise culture in the UK? Rachel Elnaugh – ex Dragons Den
Programmes like Dragons Den and The Apprentice have provided a great service to this country to spread the message that there are no free gifts or free lunches. That you actually have to do it yourself. There is too much of a culture that expects to be spoon fed.

If someone could invent a positive journalist then this would encourage people. Get away from this blame culture.

I don’t like the way we have changed to a knocking culture in recent years.

What could schools do to improve things for business?
We need to make plumbing cool again.

Do you set yourself goals?
Right at the beginning it was just to earn more money than in the job I had just left. If by Wednesday I had achieve £60 of net profit then I had achieved my goal.

I never had a five year plan. In the electronics business this is bullshit. You can’t see that far ahead.

Ideas have to be endorsed by a third party, it is no good getting your friends and family to say how great it is. You need a wake call.

You make people believe in your potential by your past successes.

Information Law with Charles Oppenheim

Picture from OneIS

A late night last Thursday due to attending an excellent talk by Professor Charles Oppenheim on information law. The event was the second in a series of talks organised by the wonderfully entrepreneurial information professional Jennifer Smith and sponsored by her OneIS company. Charles generously agreed to make his slides available on the One IS website

For his talk Charles cantered through a range of important and controversial topics, which was described as a chocolate box taster approach rather than an in depth analysis due to time constraints.

Having known Charles for many years I was already aware of his amazing ability – not only to bring what could be quite dry topics to life with amusing examples, but to explain really quite difficult subjects with clarity and brevity.

The topics covered were data protection, personal data, cloud computing, protecting your reputation online, disability discrimination, contracts and last, but by no means least, copyright.

Data protection

This is a notoriously difficult and worrying topic for information professionals, and in fact anyone whole collects data about people in the United Kingdom. It all stems from the Data Protection Act of 1998, and covers information about individuals ranging from the innocuous to highly sensitive. One curious exception to its provenance is financial information, and we spent some time during the lengthy questions and answers session at the end pondering why this might be the case. My theory is that the UK banks recognised the law would have a disruptive impact on their activities, and used their considerable influence to ring-fence this area.

The Data Protection Act is based on the following eight principles, all of which have legal status (either civil or criminal), and is regulated by an Information Commissioner:

1. Personal data must be obtained fairly, and for a bona fide purpose.
2. It can only be used for one or more purpose, which must be clearly specified.
3. The data obtained must be adequate, relevant and not excessive. Charles gave a wonderful example of a town council who included a question on chest size on their form for all new employees. The reason they asked the question was to help them keep their stocks of overalls correct for those staff who did ‘dirty jobs’, such as dustmen and women. However, when a secretary complained about the question the council (and the vast majority elsewhere in the country) were forced to change their policy.
4. The data must be accurate and up to date (where relevant).
5. It should not be kept for longer than necessary. (This led to a discussion of the recent news story about the UK police being forced to delete their DNA records of innocent civilians after six years, instead of keeping them forever).
6. The data should be processed in accordance of the rights of individuals, who retain the right to sue for inaccurate information.
7. It must be protected from loss, damage or destruction.
8. It must not be transferred outside the European Economic Area. (This led to a discussion of Google and Amazon data servers which are based in the United States).

Charles then went on to give brief overviews of five more information law topics:

1. Cloud Computing – In particular the risks of exporting or storing data outside of the European Economic Area. Many organisations are not aware that by using Google or Amazon S3 servers their data is being stored in the United States, and so in breach of UK law.

2. Protecting your reputation online:

-       This topic was about slander (temporary) and libel (published) where the reputation of an individual is harmed by false statements, to more than one ‘third’ party.

-       It only applies if there is a reputation to be harmed. So saying Jeffrey Archer is a crook would not be libellous.

-       An email to an individual is not libellous, but if it leaks out to others, then it becomes so.

-       This is a particularly thorny topic due to the big differences in libel law between countries, in particular between the United States and the UK. We currently have the strictest libel laws in the world.

-       Charles recommended regularly ‘Googling’ yourself to see what has been written about you online.

3. Disability discrimination – How you must make reasonable adjustments to cater for those with disabilities.

4. Contract law – This consists of five key elements. Offer and acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, legal capacity and formalities. Charles reviewed the three levels of formality. 1. A verbal or email agreement (unlikely to accepted in court). 2. An email with a digital signature (generally accepted as binding). 3. An email with a signature and full encryption (full legal strength).

5. Copyright – Charles ended on this most complicated and controversial topic which led on to a lengthy question and answer session. He wanted to ensure we were all aware of the fact that just because content was freely available on the Internet, this did not mean it was not covered by copyright law. He recommended using sites such as Flickr which are covered under Creative Commons licences.

Free vs Fee – the Future of News – SLA Europe meeting 3 November

Another successful SLA Europe event this evening, this time at the swanky venue of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, five minutes away from Blackfriars station.

The hot topic was Free vs Fee – the Future of News. And stemmed from the fact that most newspapers have offered their content via the Internet for free with the expectation that display advertising would create enough revenue to cover the cost of creating and distributing their content. However, with the continuing decline in physical newspaper sales and the softening of the display advertising market, news organisations are exploring new ways to charge for their digital content.

On the panel were Jeremy  Lawson  VP Sales, EMEA, Dow Jones & Company, Andrew Hughes – Commercial Director for the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D. – CEO of Acquire Media and Laurence Kaye – Principal at Laurence Kay Solicitors. The panel was excellently moderated by Donald Roll – Managing Director, Europe for Alacra.

Here are my notes from the evening:

Don Roll introduced the evening by talking about the steep decline in newspaper circulation, the recent arrival of the first free quality newspaper in the form of the London Evening Standard, and how the NLA wants to ensure newspaper publishers receive payment for web content.

Andrew Hughes – NLA initiatives

NLA are moving towards creating a set of licences for commercial use of newspaper websites.

UK newspapers spend £1b a year in creating this content, which is quite different from paper published information. For example 31% of newspaper websites has never appeared in print.

The plan is that for those who charge for access to newspaper content will be charged by the NLA, who will also charge end user clients for access to content.

Existing licences will be extended and new ones created where necessary

e-Clips Web – Working to improve access to content by using newspaper CMS systems.

Laurence Kay – The legal view – 10 key points

1. Professional journalism, ‘trusted content’ and UGC (user generated content)

2. Change takes time! Business models and culture takes time to change.

3. Global Media / local copyright?

4. If content is going to be free, why does copyright matter? Provides the framework for access and usage rights.

5. B2B versus consumer copyrights

6. ‘Effects-based’ approach to copyright. Helps to work out how to apply rules to the real world. Look at the commercial impact of activities.

7. ‘Legal’ versus ‘Illegal’ content. When to take action or technical measures over infringements.

8. Who are the ‘intermediaries’ in the value chain? E.g. Where does Google fit in? Searched for or ‘scraped’ conent?

9. ‘Fair Use’. Big variations across Europe. United States has a broad definition. If the use is commercial is that no longer fair use?

10. We are still lacking 21^st century infrastructure to cope with licensing and payments for use.

Laurence C. Rafsky – What do we mean by free?

Once freedom has been tasted there is no going back.

Value chain –

1. professionally produced but given away selectively – e.g. advertiser supported
2. Non-professional content
3. Gifted professional content. E.g. Stephen King novel
4. Free to some but not others
5. Content that should not be free.

Two enemy camps

1. Information wants to be free – the hippies
2. Corporate suits who want to charge for everything

The solution will need to be  a compromise.

A question for the NLA to consider:

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without payment to content owners?

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without permission from the content owners as we understand it?

The crux of the debate is between these two viewpoints.

Can we separate business use from personal use? Google don’t distinguish between the two.

Jeremy  Lawson – Supporting publishers and their right to monetise their content.

Questions from the audience:

Did the newspaper industry start digging its own grave by giving away content?

New York Times started with some free and mainly fee access. They ended it because when compared pay per click ads versus pay for access would give ten times the revenue. But as ad revenues fall they may go back to first model.

Should be driven by economics.

Do you think news aggregators are a serious threat to publishers?

Links are fine, but extracts complicate the issue as readers may not link through to content. But as web content grows and newspaper content becomes a smaller fraction, increasing hits to newspaper sites lose their economic value to the publishers.

85% of newspaper traffic comes via Google. So should Google pay the majority share?

Is the Kindle from Amazon a potential future model for subscription access to newspaper content?

Disagreement – ability to break news up into selected streams for readers counts against Kindle model.

When will paper newspapers die?

Laurence C. Rafsky predicted that by 2030 newspapers would cease to exist in paper form as a  mainstream product.

He compares their future to candles today – they will become a decorative only production.

As he pointed out, if you had a choice, why would you use paper for something that only has a value for a few hours, and then you need to scan it to create a digital version which can be archived.

B2B vs B2C

Issues about consumers within a business environment – now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get individuals in a corporate environment to accept paying for information.

The event was kindly sponsored by Dow Jones.

Book review – From Inventor to Entrepreneur by Celia Gates

Having met the Celia a couple of times in the Business & IP Centre  I am aware of the both the passion she has for turning inventions into business, as well as the tremendous challenges she has faced on her journey.

So I was fascinated to see how she would express these in her new book. As with all entrepreneurial ideas this book came about because it wasn’t there when Celia needed it. In other words there was a gap in the market which meant both an opportunity to help other people in the same situation.

I’ve met quite a few inventors since joining The British Library and I now recognise Celia’s description of the inventor’s mindset after having had a light-bulb moment.

‘One of those burning ideas that bores deep into your head, gives you a rush of excitement and keeps you awake at night. You simply can’t stop thinking about it and the more your do, the better it gets. You know you’re on to a ‘winner’ but, the question is:

What on earth are you supposed to do with this idea next.

It’s with this question in mind that I have written this book. It’s the book I wanted to read when I first had my idea. I searched for it, but it didn’t exist – now I hope to put the knowledge and experience I have gained to use by helping you. The advice and guidance offered herein is cheap at the price. It has cost me at least £94,000 in expensive mistakes to acquire. The intention is to save the you the same peril but, you must be warned in advance; this book is not for the feint hearted.’

Celia is more of a creative designer than traditional inventor so I was fascinated to see that one of her earliest influences was a visit to the Alessi factory in Milan. As a fan of their products for nearly thirty years I can relate to this inspiration.

Almost everyone I meet has had a light-bulb moment at some point in their life (many have claimed to have been the first to come up with the idea of wheels on suitcases). However, the key is what they do next. According to Celia, out of 33,000 ideas, only 3,000 ever get written down, out of those only 300 are developed further, 3 of those are filed for official ownership (e.g. a Patent application), and only 1 idea goes on to become a reality in the market place.

For Celia the idea is secondary in the route to market, the primary factor is the inventor.

‘You are totally and utterly responsible for the success of your idea. Turning and idea into reality has everything to do with you. You and the belief and action you are prepared to take in order to turn your idea into a phenomenal success.’

As Celia correctly points out, the very first thing you should do with your brilliant idea is to value it. Far too many inventors devote time and money developing and protecting their idea, only to find out it will never be commercially viable.

1. You need to work out who (and calculate how many) will benefit from your idea.

‘Avoid sweeping statements such as ‘everybody in the entire world is going to benefit’

Concentrate on who is going to benefit the most, and so who are likely to be your first customers.’

2. Find out how accessible you target market is. How are you going to get to meet them to talk about your idea and get their reaction?

3. Work out who you are going to be competing against. Many inventors say they are creating a new market with their idea, but even where this is true existing businesses with either feel threatened or, see a new opportunity and will respond.

4. Clearly identify your competitive edge. Why is you idea so much better than anything else on the market?

5. How sure are you of being the original creator of your idea? Similar ideas often occur simultaneously, so keep watching out for your idea in patent searches and trade magazines.

Celia has adapted the famous Edward De Bono Six Thinking Hats Principles into what she terms The Whether? Forecast. This is to help view the idea from a range of perspectives:

Sun – think sunny positive thoughts about your idea.
Rain – concentrate on all the negative aspects, and what could go wrong.
Snow – clean sheet thinking. Imagine the landscape is covered by snow and start again.
Blue Sky – think creatively, don’t be constrained to the known.
Environment – look around you and consider the physical environment in which your idea will function.
Whether Report – review the evidence and your research. Look for gaps in your knowledge and try to fill these. Examine past trends and historical patterns to help predict the future.

The importance of building prototypes is covered;
‘They say that a picture speaks a thousand words: in this case a prototype speaks a thousand pictures.’
Apparently James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes when developing his dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner.

The book gradually moves towards more entrepreneurial activities, such as the need to develop an elevator pitch. This is something inventors are particularly bad at in my experience. Too often they go into far much technical detail, forgetting to emphasise the benefits of their invention to the consumer.

In chapter eight Celia attacks the tricky issue of selling intellectual property. Many inventors really struggle with this concept as they don’t trust anyone else to take proper care of their ‘baby’. The chapter starts with the following:

‘How to get rich from your invention

So, let’s start by overcoming a barrier: are you an inventor or an entrepreneur? With a little luck you are an Inventive Entrepreneur and in this case you are in line to make some BIG MONEY…

… but before we proceed, how do you feel about this?

Are you in the invention game to make BIG MONEY or are you inventing because it is your hobby or because it rewards you in other ways?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing something because you enjoy doing it. The world needs more social entrepreneurs and if you are in this business solely because you believe you are capable of adding infinite value to the lives of many other through your ideas then you have my utmost respect.

Her in the UK we seemingly ‘hate the concept of making BIG MONEY and yet, if we open up and are honest with ourselves, the concept of infinite riches is what stimulates and motivates many of us every day.’

I have to take issue with Celia on this point, as in my experience most inventors are more motivated by wanting to see their invention come to life, rather than making millions of pounds from it.

The rest of the book covers how to get your product into the market place, including starting production, getting attention, testing and optimising, brands and assets and return on investment.

Celia’s own experiences (and those of many other inventors) lead to the inclusion of a lengthy chapter on what to do if someone has stolen your idea.

In summary, I would say that although this book is quite quirky in places, it sees the world through an inventor’s eyes. It strongly emphasises the point that – yes – the innovative idea is essential, but unless the inventor can morph themselves into an entrepreneur then their idea is likely to remain just that, an idea, rather than a product consumers can benefit from.

From Inventor to Entrepreneur by Celia Gates

• Helping you acquire essential knowledge & skills by learning how to save time & costly mistakes.
• How to generate innovative & original thoughts.
• How to develop ideas as valuable assets.
• How to secure & register official ownership.
• How to commercialise an innovation & turn the value of you intellectual property in to riches & wealth.
• How to stop your ideas being stolen & optimise your return on your investment.

Copyright contacts for writers and artists

During a business advice session yesterday I was reminded how few entrepreneurs are aware of copyright law. Most do know a bit about patents, trademarks and designs, but when it comes to copyright they flounder.

Fortunately we have produced a very simple PDF guide (What is copyright?) with much more detailed information available from the UK Intellectual Property Office. The key points are that copyright protection is free and automatic (you don’t even need to use a copyright symbol). The point that most surprises people is that copyright for authors now extends to life plus 70 years.

However rather than hope the owners of the intellectual property won’t find out you have taken their property and come after you through the courts, a much better approach is to contact them and see if you can licence their content. Fortunately thanks to the WATCH file, tracking down these copyright holders is relatively straightforward.

For example a search for Roald Dahl author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (amongst many other children’s favourites) gives the following results;

Roald Dahl   1916-1990 – 3 contacts found in the WATCH File
David Higham Associates are the principal representatives. Some copyrights (mostly for poems by Dahl) are administered by Random House Children’s Books; and film and television rights are handled by Casarotto Ramsay.
Copyright Permissions   Casarotto Ramsay Limited  VIEW
The Estate of Roald Dahl   David Higham Associates Limited  VIEW
Children’s Permissions Department   Random House Children’s Books  VIEW

About WATCH
WATCH is a database of copyright contacts for writers, artists, and prominent people in other creative fields. It is a joint project of the Harry Ransom Center and University of Reading Library in England. Founded in 1994 as a resource principally for copyright questions about literary manuscripts held in the U.S. and the U.K., it has now grown into one of the largest databases of copyright holders in the world.

25,000 inventors a year scammed

One of my colleagues has pointed out an article in today’s edition of the Daily Mirror. In the regular Rogue Traders column, Andrew Penman reviews the sad fate of Terry Ferguson who lost $10,000 to American inventions agency Davison Design.

The online version of this article is followed by several posts from previous employees of Davison Design who testify to their dubious operating procedures.

According to one of the posts over 25,000 inventors are conned each year (just in the United States). The information comes from the Invention Statistics website at Inventor Scam Statistics.

My colleague Steve van Dulken has recently posted a blog story warning of UK Invention Promotion companies, and the UKIPO have produced a pdf Step by step guide to using invention promoters.

Another sensible piece of advice is to use Google to find out a range of views on any potential company you come across. For instance the third item in a search on Davidson Design is titled Ripoff Report Search Results: DAVISON DESIGN.

Learn the basics of copyright in less than 7 minutes

This is the enticing title of a recent email video campaign aimed at information professionals.

Given the level of confusion around copyright, and the fact that librarians and information specialists are often in the front line, I was pleased to be able to increase my awareness.

In fact even though the legal aspects cover US law and includes the their concept of Fair Dealing, it covers a very complicated topic in surprising detail in a short space of time. I like the way they include sources of content that are not covered by copyright, such as ideas, facts, data,  and publications created by the US Government.

Needless to say, given the source of the video (the Copyright Clearance Center) the information tends towards compliance and the reasons why.

Sadly, they don’t make any reference to Creative Commons and the choice of licences available there.

Corporate workers share information every day, but what percentage get copyright permission?

Most people don’t knowingly violate copyright law, they are simply unaware of their copyright responsibilities. To help increase awareness, CCC has created a FREE video that provides the basics of copyright in a fun and informative way.

In less than 7 minutes, Jim T. Librarian explains why copyright is important, what is and isn’t covered
under U.S. copyright law, and why attribution isn’t always enough.
Copyright Basics – The Video
Thank you for your interest in CCC’s
Copyright Basics

This Program is made available for your use by the rights licensing experts at Copyright Clearance Center. We welcome you to view the video here and/or download it for non-commercial use in your organization (terms and conditions apply).

Professor James Boyle and the fight for Creative Commons

I have already blogged about Professor Boyle’s latest book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. And having heard him interviewed by Laurie Taylor on a recent Thinking Allowed broadcast on Radio 4, I was excited to hear he would be speaking in to staff in the British Library.

He did not disappoint, being erudite, passionate and amusing in his explanation of the rapid (since the 1970’s) and significant (from 28 years to life + 70 years) expansion of copy right restrictions.

One of his most memorable points for me was the deafening silence from the US Copyright Office when asked how he could make his work copyright free. His point being, that the law has been extended to cover all creative works with no regard to the views of the authors who want to allow access.

He talked about my current favourite ‘book’ on copyright issues, produced by his colleagues at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. It is actually a comic called Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW? and is freely available.

He asked how many in the audience would have predicted that the open and non-hierarchical approach underlying the Wikipedia project would have resulted in a resource as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica, but twenty times the size, and updated in real-time.

Finally he explained the role of the Creative Commons movement in making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

The EasyClean Squeeze Roller Cleaner

I spent a few hours this weekend painting part of my kitchen. Historically I have had a love hate relationship with decorating using a roller.

The system is an incredibly quick and efficient way of getting paint onto a flat surface, whether it be a wall or ceiling. I certainly don’t recommend using anything else for a ceiling, having had paint dripped in my eye whilst using a brush in the past.

However, the advantages of the roller based approach come crashing down when it comes to cleaning up at the end of the job. In theory you can dismantle the roller and just rinse it under a cold tap. In practice you get paint all over yourself and spend tens of minutes desperately trying to get the roller clean of paint. Eventually you give up and leave it somewhere warm to dry. The next day you discover the roller is rock hard from residual paint and has to be thrown away. Sometimes you can’t even keep the roller usable between coats of paint.

But now thanks to an incredibly simple invention I can clean and re-use my rollers to my hearts content. I need to thank Ed Adamson (the inventor) and the Harris paint brush company for making roller painting an almost completely pain-free experience. Apart of course from those times when one leans against a still wet wall.

Although I am straying into my colleague Steve Van Dulken’s territory here with his Patent Search Blog, I couldn’t resist looking up the patent application for the invention on esp@cnet (the European Patent Office) and found WO2008077469 (A1) A ROLLER SLEEVE CLEANER.

However I also came across lots of other weird and wonderful variations, some of which I have included below.