Intellectual Property

For some companies, ideas are just as important as the products they produce. But navigating intellectual property laws and finding the money to patent those ideas is sometimes a daunting challenge for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. The Howard County Business Resource Center is developing a resource to help inventors through all the hoops - from getting basic information on patents to helping license the technology so that others can manufacture the product. The Intellectual Property Advisory Service, run by Nancy Gebhart, who worked in the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Maryland, College Park, is scheduling a series of seminars and networking opportunities, consulting with local inventors and searching for grants to help businesses cover the expenses of the patenting process.

For some companies, ideas are just as important as the products they produce. But navigating intellectual property laws and finding the money to patent those ideas is sometimes a daunting challenge for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. The Howard County Business Resource Center is developing a resource to help inventors through all the hoops - from getting basic information on patents to helping license the technology so that others can manufacture the product. The Intellectual Property Advisory Service, run by Nancy Gebhart, who worked in the Office of Technology Commercialization at University of Maryland, College Park, is scheduling a series of seminars and networking opportunities, consulting with local inventors and searching for grants to help businesses cover the expenses of the patenting process.

Dr. Edward D. Miller, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Dr. Elias Zerhouni, chairman of Hopkins' Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, recently spoke with Richard C. Gross, editor of the Opinion Commentary page, at The Sun's editorial offices. The discussion focused on plans for a biotech center at Hopkins. Q: Baltimore has plans for a biotech center that would be on 22 of 80 acres near Hopkins. The project would cost about $600 million in private and public money.

Public libraries don't need permission from publishers, Hollywood or the record companies when they lend books, videotapes and CDs to their patrons. And when you buy a CD, you're permitted to make a personal copy on a cassette tape so you can play the music in your car. But public libraries are in jeopardy under new laws designed to protect copyright holders, and so are your rights to what's called "fair use" of what you've bought. This state of affairs is wrong, says Rep. Rick Boucher, one of the few members of Congress who cares about your rights in the Digital Age. The Virginia Democrat plans to sponsor legislation to change a 1998 law that grossly altered the balance between holders and users of copyrighted material.

ATLANTA -- As a college student, attending the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the future of Napster is a little bit like eavesdropping on your parents when they discuss what they should do about a fight you had with your younger brother. They know little about the situation (and probably don't care), they have all the power and there's a good chance you could end up losing one of your favorite toys if your brother cries loud enough. In the case of Napster, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, wants to be your daddy, 20 million people stand to lose a toy that is also a boon to their lives and, for good measure, Lars Ulrich of Metallica plays the part of the whining tot. As I sat through hours of political posturing from all sides at the hearing earlier this summer, I was able to console myself with the knowledge that no matter what the committee decides to do to Napster and its users, there will still be plenty of free music on the Internet when classes resume next month.

Two years ago, Congress passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Many people warned correctly that this legislation was an abandonment of constitutional principles and the public interest - a grossly unbalanced law that would give the owners of intellectual property vast new authority, simultaneously shredding users' rights. The latest fallout from Congress' sellout rained down a few weeks ago in New York. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, spewing contempt for the defendants in a closely watched case, ruled that it was not only illegal for a Web site to post software code that allowed people to view DVD movies on nonauthorized devices, but that it was also illegal even to post a hyperlink to the code on someone else's computer.

CLEVELAND --Cleaning my basement the other day was like a tour through our disposable society. I threw out a 7-year-old Mac computer that was as relevant as a leisure suit. I tossed a bunch of Happy Meal toys that entertained my kids about as long as the burgers they came with. And I threw out a few antique phones -- you know, the kind with cords. I worked my way like an archeologist to the modern era -- the most throwaway layer -- last week's newspapers. There I read about Napster and about a program in San Diego to test the DNA of convicts who believe they were falsely accused.

EntreMed Inc., the Rockville developer of Angiostatin, an experimental tumor-fighting protein, countersued Abbott Laboratories in Boston yesterday, accusing the pharmaceutical company of using intimidation to gain rights to market a similar drug in the future. EntreMed and Children's Hospital in Boston allege that the drug company is trying to obtain rights to the material it neither discovered nor owns. Unspecified compensatory damages are sought. "This case is about very valuable science with great implications for the public at large," said William F. Lee, an attorney representing Children's Hospital and three researchers named in the Abbott lawsuit.

In Paraguay, Nintendo Corp. seizes 600,000 counterfeit semiconductor chips from a renegade game company. In Beijing, the Chinese government awards $147,000 to a factory worker who informs against a production line making pirated music CDs. In Moscow, security forces monitor the Gorbushka market, a bucolic park where hundreds of black marketeers line up to trade pirated copies of Microsoft Windows for a handful of rubles. And in California, a desperate recording industry is suing a tiny company whose software allows college students to trade music over the Internet.

WASHINGTON -- The government's breakup proposal for Microsoft amounts to creating an unprecedented regulated information technology sector with severe implications across a very healthy and competitive industry. The areas in which we would find government involvement in the industry where none previously existed include government-designed software, erosion of intellectual property protection, price controls, product marketing restrictions and managed competition. The U.S. Justice Department and 17 states have urged U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to create two companies out of Microsoft.