ACLU: Patenting Abstract Ideas Violates The Constitution

TomP, an excellent blogger and lawyer, penned this important piece at the Daily Kos and at Docudharma. As a business librarian and one who speaks for more information out in the open, this issue is a concern for for libraries as well as information brokers, bloggers, writers, and for small companies who are still in R & D phases. It's not to say that we should plagiarize, but this is a completely different issue.

With TomP's permission, I am reposting this here because the unitary powers our current Administration believes it has (and so anti-small business). Thank goodness for the ACLU.

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of the court brief today urging a federal court to uphold the denial of a patent that would, if awarded, violate freedom of speech. In the brief, the ACLU argues that Bernard L. Bilski is seeking a patent for an abstract idea, and that abstract ideas are not patentable under the First Amendment.

"The court must ensure that any test it uses in determining whether to award a patent is in line with the Constitution," said Christopher Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, who filed the brief. "If the government had the authority to grant exclusive rights to an idea, the fundamental purpose of the First Amendment - to protect an individual's right to thought and expression - would be rendered meaningless."

ACLU

Privatizing damn near everything has long been the goal of the 1%ers and their lackeys in the Republican Party.

More from the ACLU on this:

In 2006, Bilski sought a patent for his idea that the weather risk involved in buying and selling commodities could be minimized if sellers had conversations with two buyers instead of one. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied his request and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed the denial. Bilski appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the court has agreed to hear the case in a single joint session in May.

"Patent law prohibits the patenting of abstract ideas, but recently the courts and the patent office have been granting patents that consist essentially of speech or thought," said Hansen. "If the government continues to allow patents of speech or thought it risks violating the First Amendment.

"No one can have a monopoly on an idea or prohibit speech on a particular subject."

ACLU

Link to the brief is here.

Because the patent at issue consists soley of speech or thought, the ACLU argues that it cannot be granted without violating the First Amendment.

We have seen how the privatizing regime has distorted patent law to the point that life, itself, is patentable:

You can't patent snow, eagles or gravity, and you shouldn't be able to patent genes, either. Yet by now one-fifth of the genes in your body are privately owned.

The results have been disastrous. Ordinarily, we imagine patents promote innovation, but that's because most patents are granted for human inventions. Genes aren't human inventions, they are features of the natural world. As a result these patents can be used to block innovation, and hurt patient care.

NYTimes: Patenting Life

A dangerous wave of privatisation of all biological diversity is presently taking place under the label of 'intellectual property rights', i.e. patenting of plants, animals and individual parts of DNA.

snip

Patenting allows industry to take control of and exploit organisms and genetic material as exclusive private property that can be sold to or withheld from farmers, breeders, scientists and doctors. "Technology agreements" and fees on seeds deprive farmers of their generations-old right to replant and exchange their seeds. Vast, unsubstantiated patent claims on DNA deter scientists from research in areas that have already been "claimed" by big companies with large legal budgets. Patents on life create Bio-Piracy and a new form of colonialism: In the South, where most global food crops originate from, freely available seeds and specimens are analysed by genetic engineering companies and then patented to be sold back at high prices to those, who originally maintained and developed these varieties over generations.

Greenpeace opposes all patents on genes, plants, humans and parts of the human body and regards the biodiversity of this planet the common heritage of humankind.

Greenpeace: Patenting Life

Progress marches on. Life itself. Abstract ideas. Stop thinking: someone else owns that idea.

I'm glad the ACLU is fighting this.

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And so is TomP and we will too.

Who Should Progressives Trust?

Yesterday, I posted about a heated exchange that took place between Madame Clinton and Mr. Randall Rolph in Iowa over the weekend. Apparently, this story is gaining attention as even Dan Baltz at WaPO is reporting on it.

Blogger Wade Norris picked up the WaPO story and created a diary at the Daily Kos about it. It's still on the recommended list. Norris was accused of channeling Drudge, supplying misinformation.

Hillary Murdoch posts the same WaPO story at Taylor Marsh. Taylor, in her analysis, uses the "sexism" angle, even though conceding that Andrew Sullivan might have a point about Clinton's arrogance in this instance. Since arrogance from Clinton is interpreted as "she's very working hard", Marsh contends that if a male candidate had reacted to the attendee as Clinton did, the media would see it as a sign of strength instead.

Did Taylor overlook that the first link to the exchange was reported by a woman? Does that mean the woman journalist is also sexist? I found two women who first reported on this heated dialog yesterday. I think they were just doing their job.

But look at the next commentary that Taylor probably has not seen yet.

Kos, whom you all know has infuriated me about calling Edwards weak for accepting public funds for the primaries, took a different approach and quoted from the Union-Leader (NH) a retired woman general who about who supported Clinton for this reason:

A retired U.S. Army general visiting [New Hampshire] to campaign for Hillary Clinton said yesterday she does not oppose the Iraq war -- and she said she's never heard Clinton oppose it, either [...]

Kennedy said, "I don't oppose the war. I think it's being very badly led by the civilian leadership." And, [Retired Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy] added, "I have not ever heard (Clinton) say, 'I oppose the war.' I've heard her say that we need to begin withdrawal under a plan led by the military and defense secretary. I've heard her say we need to create a regional stabilizing group by allies, by leaders in the world and by all of the states that are bordering Iraq. That is a very important idea and the point of that group is to create incentive and assurances that will keep the neighboring countries from becoming involved and entering Iraq. That's a much more sophisticated thing than saying, 'I oppose the war.'"

Yes, I am supplying a link to Kos because he gets the hat-tip for finding the information and pointing out that Clinton is not anti-war, and validates what Norris was reporting. Then there's another glaring problem Clinton will be dealing with: having Sandy Berger as an advisor. Great, a guy who stole classified documents from the National Archives a few years ago, and got caught.

What everyone is missing, except Pioneer and Montana Maven who posted here yesterday, is something Mark Schmitt penned at TAPPED back in mid-February about Clinton's view of executive power.

However, we have just gone through a period of the most staggering expansion of executive power in history, and I suspect that we don’t know the half of it. The setup that was the Iraq resolution, the manipulation of the executive branch itself in order to deceive Congress was one example of it. The next president will have to comb through a mass of undisclosed executive orders, secret legal opinions, bizarre theories, manipulative structures, embedded political appointees, excessive classification, and let some daylight back in. The last thing we need at this moment is yet another president who "believes in executive authority and Congressional deference." We need a president who respects separation of powers and democracy. After all, the next president will not be our last.

At the Yearly Kos, Jeffrey Feldman fielded a question to John Edwards about the unitary executive, an issue that loomed large in the pool of questions he and others collected from bloggers:

"The current administration has done so much to consolidate power to the Executive branch at the expense of the other two and in violation of the Constitution. As President, what will you do to restore balance amongst all three branches of government?"

Edwards response is better to be watched and heard rather than retyping the script:





I don't see that Clinton is going to be much different from Bush. And no matter what anyone says, her arrogant attitude with Mr. Rolph, a former Deaniac, is going to get noticed, and it should, if you are a progressive. And I trust John Edwards to do as he says he will, which is restoring the trust of Presidency as our founding fathers (and their wives who supported them) intended.