Two directions

Ian Hargreaves' report, publishe yesterday, comes from a standpoint that's familiar - that creative things only happen because creators get financial rewards. It's a world in which the threat of the RIAA - if you stop record labels making money, music will die - is a guiding principle.

However, The Next Web is reporting a start date for Peer-To-Patent UK, a new government scheme which aims to streamline patent law by inviting people around the planet to inspect applications:

You may be wondering what’s in it for these third party experts? Why would they want to feed into the patent examining process? Well, it’s for the same reason anyone in the global community would offer their time and knowledge – it’s for the greater good.

So it looks like the UK Government is now living firmly in a world where it believes nobody will do anything without a clear financial reward, unless it's the UK government who isn't paying any money.

Jackson fakes crackdown

Apparently the Jackson estate are busily trying to crack down on the booming industry in fake Jacko memorabilia.

They're trying to stop fans being ripped off by items purporting to be Jackson-related but where the face on the items just looks like a poor-quality reproduction. Things like t-shirts, mugs, and Michael Jackson for the last ten years of his life are given as examples of this shoddy work.

Five entities with no obvious link to the Jackson family have tried to trademark the phrase "King of Pop" on everything from drink umbrellas to juggling balls since the day he died.

Michael Jackson juggling balls? There's a headline the Weekly World News would have loved to have got.

But the family have no right to the title anyway:

Complicating matters is that the phrase "King of Pop" was not actually registered to the singer, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which has some of his applications on display in a free exhibit in Washington.

He registered "Michael Jackson" as a trademark, the office said, but only on sound recordings, videotapes and movies involving music and entertainment. Jackson owned a patent on a shoe that allowed the wearer to lean past his center of gravity, as he did in the "Smooth Criminal" video, but it expired in 2005 because he didn't pay a $2,480 maintenance fee.

They gave him a patent on an orthopaedic dance shoe? Really? It's hard to see how the owner of such a patent died in so much debt. Pity he never pitched the shoes in the Dragon's Den - a nice bit of banter with Duncan; get Theo to muck about in the shoes; he'd have been quids in. The road not travelled, isn't it?

Shazam! See you in court

Shazam - that handy little thing which lets your phone tell you what you're listening to - is getting sued, along with several companies which use their technology:

Shazam is named along with Samsung, Apple, Amazon.com, Napster, Motorola, Gracenote, Verizon Wireless, LG Electronics, AT&T Mobility, and Pantech Wireless in a suit filed Tuesday over U.S. Patent No. 6,941,275, which was issued to Remi Swierczek/Tune Hunter in September 2005. The suit accuses Shazam's music discovery and identification service of violating the patent and the other companies of benefiting directly from Shazam's alleged infringement.

That patent:

Tune Hunter's patent covers "a music identification/purchasing system, specifically to a method for marking the time and the name of the radio station in portable device such as a key holder, watch, cellular phone, beeper or the like which will allow the user to learn via internet or regular telephone the name of the song, artist and/or music company by matching the stored data with broadcast archive."

How did they get a patent for that when, erm, Shazam has been running since about 2002?

Apple tells iPods 'hush now'

The Daily Telegraph is quite excited about Apple's newly filed patent which will allow iPods to automatically lower their levels to protect hearing:

It is the first time that the company has explicitly expressed fears over the risk the device poses to hearing.

Apart from, you know, when it has before and when it launched the sound limiting software.

This is, however, a new idea:

A new patent reveals that the next iPods and iPhones could automatically calculate how long a person has been listening, and at what volume, before gradually reducing the sound level.

It states: "Since the damaging effects on users' hearing is both gradual and cumulative, even those users who are concerned about hearing loss may not behave in a manner that would limit or minimise such damaging effects."

So, the longer you listen to your music player, the less you'll be able to hear it. Which is, of course, the same thing that happens if you don't have this technology built-in to it.

There is a broader question, though: if this is such an important, humane idea - and it is - why are Apple patenting it, rather than sharing it for everyone's benefits? Do people with Zunes deserve to lose their hearing or something?