Thomas Edison – Inventor of the Light Bulb?

I began to research the history of patents and stumbled upon some interesting facts:
· Thomas Edison (U.S. Inventor) had 1,093 U.S. patents, including a few in Germany, France and the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Edison_patents
· Edison was granted a patent for the Incandescent Lamp in January, 1880 (U.S. Patent #223,898).
· Joseph Swan (British Physicist and Chemist) held British patents for Incandescent Lamps. His inventions and patents were also completed around 1880, and were in direct competition with Edison.
· Donald Weder (Floral Designer from Highland, IL) has 1,321 U.S. patents. These patents are in the floral business. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Donald+&FIELD1=INNM&co1=AND&TERM2=Weder&FIELD2=INNM&d=PTXT
· Shunpei Yamazaki (Japanese Inventor) has 2,231 registered U.S patents (plus a few more prior to 1976. His patents are in the field of computer science. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=In%2F%22Yamazaki%2C+Shunpei%22&d=PTXT

There is much written about Thomas Edison and his works, including reference to his invention of the Incandescent Lamp. There is also a bit of controversy over who invented the lamp first – Swan or Edison. In actuality, there were numerous early inventions leading up to 1880 (for details see the following link): http://www.unmuseum.org/lightbulb.htm

Apparently, both Swan and Edison were involved in a patent infringement case for rights to this invention. The following article explains why Edison is given credit for this invention: http://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/bios/swan.htm

The Folly of Blogging

This post is being written not only for the purposes of this class and its current students, but as a warning for students that may follow.

We learned last night that our friend and classmate, Cindy, was terminated from her job because she posted confidential information concerning her employer's intellectual property litigation. Apparently, Cindy's employer discovered her post and asked/forced the removal of her post and then terminated her employment. This also led to Cindy dropping the class and perhaps ending her hope of finishing the M.A. PSML program at Webster.

I, and probably the rest of the class were shocked to hear this. We all pretty much agreed that the information that Cindy posted seemed to be "public information", but if not, certainly did not seem to be damaging information to her employer. However, if the document she used to pull this information was labeled as confidential as we must assume, then it seems her employer may have been necessarily concerned.

Other than the obvious concern and sadness this news regarding Cindy brings, there was something else that came to my mind immediately. During other classes in this program, I and others have used examples or ideas from our employment in class projects (i.e. research papers and in-class presentations). This has been done at the prompting/suggestion of the class instructors. I realize the blog is a much more public offering than the other projects in this program have been; however, I doubt that our employer's legal teams would make too much from this distinction. Personally, I bring this up because I am not 100% sure of what detailed areas I work in are proprietary/confidential and what are not. I do have a pretty good idea of what would fall in those areas, but I couldn't say in all certainty which side of the coin each specific detail would be considered. I doubt any of us that are currently in this program could say so either.

To sum up my thoughts about this, I do not plan on using anything from my work environment as examples or material for projects in the remainder of this program. I feel that unless I had these projects given the OK by my company's legal department, I could be overlooking something that may cost me a lot.

I encourage my classmates and program instructors to comment with their thoughts.

Registering Copyrights

Well, I just registered a user name and password with eCO, the electronic Copyright Office. I've given some thought to the pro's and con's of registering my photograph copyrights and decided to give it a try. Here are some of my thoughts, understandings and reasoning behind this decision. Forgive me if I tend to ramble a little.

First, I don't intend to actively pursue photography as a means to making a living; however, I do "publish" my images on Flickr and the options I choose in that site do make it possible for anyone to download full sized images. I like that aspect of Flickr and I don't want to ruin it just because someone may decide to infringe my rights. Many hobbyists on Flickr post smaller, low quality images, or place gigantic watermark signatures all over their photographs. But, what's the fun of that? When I want to view an image, I want to see what it's really about. Unadulterated. I understand why professionals do this; they want to ensure they can make a living. Anyway, I'm interested in the hobby/passion of it, and other than placing a few prints for sale in an art show or submitting an image to a photo contest, I'm really not interested in worrying about getting paid for my hobby.

So why try and go through this hassle? Because I want to ensure nobody else makes their retirement using my images either. Some things I've learned in this class helped sway my decision. You can place up to 750 images in one "collection" that fall under one copyright registration. So, that sounds a lot better than $35 a photo. Another important factor was the additional protection that registration provides (statutory claims and attorney fees in successful litigation). Also, because you must submit a deposit copy that becomes stored in the Library of Congress, there will be a public record of my work for as long as this country stands, I recon. This also means that after my copyright privileges expire (70 years following my death under current legislation), because these works are held within the Library of Congress, my images will officially be registered as public domain. People of that time will, in theory, be able to access and use images I created.

Now, my struggle is to use my slight computer knowledge to successfully fill out the application and submit my deposit copies. This may be more difficult for me than it sounds. To submit this many potential images (I will be submitting jpg format at 1-20mb a piece), there are certain things I need to do. It looks like the best way, if I want to electronically submit, is to bunch several images into zip files. Other than knowing the basic concept of a zip file and knowing that the words "zip file" exist together in nature, I know nothing else. If I successfully submit an application and copy submission, it apparently takes about nine months before I'll receive a certificate of registration.

It looks like I have some research to do. I'll keep the blog informed to my progress, if there is any.

Are computer fonts protected by copyright law? What about the Alphabet?

While researching copyright infringement, I began to wonder if the Alphabet could be copyright protected. I came across an article from the Computer Law Review and Technology Journal—Summer 1998 written by Jonathan L. Mezrich. http://www.naavi.org/cl_editorial_04/copyright_font_case.pdf

This article discusses a court case from 1998 between Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc. regarding copyright protection of software programs that create fonts. The article explains that “typeface” is considered to be alphanumeric characters; whereas “font” represents the typeface using a computer file or program. It goes on to clarify that “fonts” are further categorized into two types: bitmapped fonts and scalable fonts.

The court ruled in favor of Adobe Systems, Inc. and determined that software programs used to create fonts with distinct typefaces are protected by copyright law. Prior to this court case – typeface, fonts and font-generating software were apparently not allowed copyright registration. It was interesting to learn that after the court ruling the Copyright Office began to allow copyright registration of scalable fonts (i.e. font-generating software). However, they continued to not allow registration of bitmapped fonts (i.e. computerized representation of a typeface).

Now back to my original search topic – Can the Alphabet be copyright protected? I’m not sure about the actual letters, but the “Alphabet Song” does hold a copyright. The lyrics appear to have been copyrighted by Charles Bradlee in 1835, with the musical arrangement by Louis Le Maire. The tune claims to be based on an old French melody named “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”, of which Mozart wrote twelve variations on the piano. The same tune was used for "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star".

Blockbuster movie "The Matrix" lost a copyright infringement case. Sophia Stewart's work titled "The Third EYE" was copyrighted in 1981 and also sent to the Wachowski Brothers who later partnered with Warner Brothers. After filing her suit in 1999, there has been a recent 6 year dispute and it was determined more than 30 minutes were edited out of the film to avoid copyright penalties and witnesses stated they knew it was not the work of Wachowski and admitted to using Stewarts work as they were developing the film.

Prison Break Infringement

On 10-24-06, the Associated Press had a report that the show "Prison Break" that use to appear on FOX television was a copyright infringement of a manuscript that Donald and Robert Hughes (brothers) had submitted. The manuscript described details of how one brother was jailed and the other got put in jail to help break him out, very similar to the story line for the FOX hit show. For those that are interested, the brothers were in prison in the mid-sixties and were exonerated for the crimes in 1968. the two brothers noted more than 30 places, names or events that were described in their submitted manuscript.

Okay. After sitting in class last night and listening to all the great information on copyright, I can't help but wonder about the enforcement of it all. I searched for stats but they seem hard to find. Vague estimates show 25-30% of material on the internet has been infringed. But you can't tell me that 30% of the global users are policing for copyright. Unless you have a financial interest or can pay employees to search for copyright pirates, I doubt the average American or European thinks about or cares about this issue - until they get caught. If I find an online calander that someone from Africa made and then copied it at Kinkos for everyone in my small town in Kansas, how will the enforcement play out?