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).

Will Spotify kill iTunes?

This is the heading for an intriguing article in the latest issue of gadget obsessed Stuff magazine.

I have to admit that I only heard about Spotify for the first time two weeks ago on Leo Laporte’s net@night 91.

However, since then the mainstream press has started to pick up on it as a potential iTunes killer – Spotify declares war on iTunes.

It seems hard to believe that Spotify can already have six million tracks (including the very latest albums in full) and over a million members signed up to either its’ free advert supported service, or the ad-free subscription of £9.99 per month. Although the fact I am listening for free to the brand new album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as I write, proves the case.

Now it has gone one stage further by linking up with London-based online music store, 7Digital which has four million individual tracks.

This is yet another indication of just how revolutionary the Internet can be when it comes to both established and even novel business models. It took iTunes just six years to become the dominant player in music sales, currently accounting for 70 per cent of all online music sales, and selling six billion songs along the way.

However, Spotify was only launched in the UK in October last year and already has more than a million customers.

The lesson, is that if you are going to operate a web based business you can’t afford to stand still for a moment.

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.

Improve your IP awareness with the British Library and the IPO

Thanks to the good folks at the Intellectual Property Office and my colleagues at the British Library, you have a choice of routes to improve your IP awareness.

We have two courses covering the Basics of Intellectual Property Protection and Searching IP databases.

The Intellectual Property Office have introduced an IP Healthcheck which consists of four questionnaires covering Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Copyright.

You can choose which of the four questionnaires in the IP Healthcheck you want to complete by clicking ‘Go to the first question’. If you’re not sure whether a questionnaire is relevant to you, click ‘Is this for me’.

Once you have answered all the questions, you will see a summary of our recommended Action Points, based on what you have told us. You can click ‘Why/how’ for an explanation of each Action Point, and how you can put it into practice. Your summary also contains links to further useful information and resources.

You can download the full Confidential Report as a .pdf, or ask us to email it to you.

Every Confidential Report is automatically stored in Your Report Library. You can return and view it as often as you like.

You cannot change your answers once you have completed an IP Healthcheck questionnaire, but you can retake it as many times as you like, to see what the Confidential Report says if you give different answers. We recommend that you keep a note of the answers you gave for each Confidential Report.

If you cannot complete a health check questionnaire, it will still be saved in Your Report Library, marked as ‘Uncompleted’. You can revisit it later, and complete it.

India moves to patent yoga poses

On first inspection this would be filed under ‘Friday fun’, although it was drawn to my attention by an email from a customer who wanted the official British Library view on the Daily Telegraph story.

Needles to say, we don’t have a view, but I have to say I was amazed to to discover that yoga positions could be protected:

“Copyrights over yoga postures and trademarks on yoga tools have become rampant in the West. Till now, we have traced 130 yoga-related patents in the US. We hope to finish putting on record at least 1500 yoga postures by the end of 2009,” said Dr V.P Gupta, of the CSIR, who created the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.

And even more surprised to hear how the Indian government has reacted:

So far a team of yoga gurus from nine schools have worked with government officials and 200 scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to scan 35 ancient texts including the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Bhagwad Gita, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to register each native pose.

The topic even has its own Wikipedia page entitled Yoga Piracy.

Protect your content against online plagiarism and theft

Many of my Business Advice clients are concerned about rivals stealing their on-line content, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across the free Copyscape service whilst researching a replacement mobile phone on the Mobile Phones UK: Reviews & Best Buys website.

All you need to do is post in your website address and see where (and how much of it) is appearing elswhere on the Web. Needless to say Copyscape offer a premium service with no monthly limit and batch searching for a fee.

Copyscape recommend you put a warning notice on your website to help scare off any potential content theives.

Defend your site with a plagiarism warning banner!

Otto Rohwedder and the greatest thing since sliced bread

The greatest thing since sliced bread

I’m sure you will have heard this phrase before, used all to often to describe the latest gizmo or gadget. But have you come across the name Otto Rohwedder? I’m guessing you haven’t.

Otto, originally a jeweller, was the inventor of the world’s first mechanical sliced bread, which went on sale on July 7 1928,  in Chillicothe, Missouri.

After many setbacks, including a fire which destroyed his first factory as well as blueprints and prototype, he managed to develop a successful process for slicing and wrapping the bread. However sales were slow at first as suspicious consumers were slow to accept a pre-sliced bread, but soon everyone wanted sliced bread. By 1933, only five years after its introduction, American bakeries were turning out more sliced than unsliced bread.

Below are a few of his many patent application drawings.

Facebook backs down over controversial privacy policy

Intellectual Property topics can come from all sorts of unexpected places. The headline above was the lead story facing me as I picked up my local free Metro newspaper this morning.

Firstly, I was surprised to see the social networking phenomenon making it to the forefront of ‘old media’, and secondly, surprised to see Facebook backing down in the face of user complaints so quickly.

The last major U-Turn from Facebook I am aware of was in November 2007 when they removed their online tracking of purchases after more than 50,000 Facebook members signed a petition objecting to the program. Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking.

This time the response from the company has been much more swift, and this evening when I logged into Facebook I was confronted with the message below:

Terms of Use Update: Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog. If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Bobbie Johnson in the Guardian explains the background to this latest crisis facing Facebook:

Facebook has backed down on controversial changes to its terms of service that angered users and caused protests across the social networking site.

Two weeks ago the site altered its terms of service so that it continued to retain a copy of all a user’s messages, actions and updates – even if they left the network. Until the change, Facebook’s policy was to delete all traces of a user if they chose to quit the site.

After the potential scope of the new legal wording became clear, thousands of outraged Facebook users and privacy campaigners lobbied for the world’s largest social network to revert to its old terms of service.

On Monday it seemed these calls were falling on deaf ears after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended the changes in a blogpost, and suggested that users should trust the site with their data.

However, just 24 hours later the company decided to back down. In a message to users last night, Facebook said it would be reverting to its previous terms and conditions for the time being.

The BIG and Easy Guide to take a Bright Idea from Drawing Board to Successful Revenue

As a librarian of over 20 years there is nothing I like better than a book whose title describes its contents.

The BIG and Easy Guide to take a Bright Idea from Drawing Board to Successful Revenue is nothing if not informative. However, the fact it is written by Rob Lucas who has helped to develop our e-learning courses in Intellectual Property, and more surprisingly, seems to be a unique publication in covering this important topic, gives it even more value.

Certainly, those better informed on this topic than myself are impressed.

“Whether you are an aspiring inventor working from home or in the R&D department of a major institution, this book is an essential read.  I know of no other book like it”
Dr John Beacham CBE; DSc; FRSC
Former Senior Innovation Advisor to the
Department of Trade and Industry (now the DBERR)

Once again Amazon provides the opportunity to have a peek inside, to see that Rob covers the key topics of confidentiality and when to file for protection.

Is Creative Commons the future of copyright?

I listened to a fascinating discussion on In Business on Radio 4 recently with Professor James Boyle of Duke Law School.

Professor Boyle is the co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons, which is working to facilitate the free availability of art, scholarship, and cultural materials by developing innovative, machine-readable licenses that individuals and institutions can attach to their work.

Although not arguing for the end of all traditional forms of copyright. For instance the intellectual property within movies will still need to be protected in order to recover the significant cost of production. However, he argues for a much more flexible approach to use of creative output.

In this spirit he has ‘published’ his latest book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind both in hard copy and as a free download under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.

Professor Boyle explains his reasons for taking this approach by indicating that the free publicity gained will lead to more sales than those lost to free downloads.

“Why am I allowing you to copy the book for free?  And why is Yale University Press letting me?   To understand why I am doing it, watch this video by Jesse Dylan.  And if you want to  understand why it  makes economic sense to my publisher, read this short article.”

This may seem like a risky or foolish approach to those with a traditional view of Intellectual Property, but there is growing evidence of its success. The latest high profile example is from heavy metal band Nine Inch Nails, who’s Creative Commons licensed Ghosts I-IV was ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon’s MP3 store.

In other words, a music album that can be legally downloaded and distributed over the Internet for free, has sold more than any others for $5 each, and earned over $1.6 million in revenue for NIN in its first week.

This is all makes fascinating reading given my participation in the next Real Time Club event, Intellectual Property:  Success Story To Be Extended? Just Desserts or Global Gridlock? on 27 January at the National Liberal Club in London.

35,000 blog views so far – but the paper clip is King

My weekly sitemeter blog monitoring email has just arrived announcing I have reached 20,271 page views and 16,200  visitors since I started blogging a couple of year ago.

For reasons too complicated to go into here, I maintain a duplicate copy of this blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/inthroughtheoutfield. And this has generated 14,722 page views and 10,344 visitors respectively.

The reason for mentioning this, is the surprising discovery that the most popular story on my blogs (by a factor of 4) was the one about the humble paper clip from August 2007 The not so simple paper clip. I have spent some time trying work out why this particular story has proved to be so popular, but remain bemused.

Equally confusing is why British Standard for a cup of tea – BS 6008 is second on the list.

The art of business and the business of art

My Business Advice clients vary enormously in their business interests to the point where I rarely get surprised by their ideas.

However last week I saw an artist and her partner, who’s project (an ‘intervention‘ as she called it) involves building a multi-million pound house (with a significant twist). Although houses as art are not new, with perhaps Rachel Whiteread’s House, a concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian terraced house completed in autumn 1993 and exhibited at the location of the original house in East London. It drew mixed responses, winning her both the Turner Prize for best young British artist in 1993 and the K Foundation art award for worst British artist.

My client was concerned that her idea, which in some respects is even more simple in concept, if not in construction, would be stolen by rival artists. Unfortunately the nature of intellectual property is that the less tangible the idea the weaker the protection. For example the storyline for a novel is much more difficult to protect than the finished book, printed and bound.

During the advice session she recommended a visit to Roger Hiorns latest work Seizure. This show the results of a giant science experiment in a derelict flat in south London. After reinforcing the walls and ceiling and covering them in plastic sheeting, 80,000 litres of a copper sulphate solution was poured in from a hole in the ceiling. After a few weeks the temperature of the solution fell and the crystals began to grow. The result is spectacular to say the least.

The artist admiring the fruits of his labour

Patent myths

Many of the clients I meet who have invented something new have a basic misunderstanding of the power of a patent.

They believe that once they go through the time consuming (and potentialy expensive) UK patent process. Their intellectual property is fully and automatically protected. I have to explain to them that the UKIPO (previously the Patent Office) does not act as an IP police force, they just decide who gets a patent.

In their latest IP Insight article (link) Simon Crossley, technology partner at Eversheds LLP law firm in Cambridge, explains the steps inventors need to employ to protect the commercial content of their ideas.

One of the key activities is to watch the market for infringements.

“You might as well forget about your IP, if you ignore what everyone else is doing in your market and let the unscrupulous trample on your rights. In the same way as you watch your competitors’ marketing strategy and product development, you should think about whether anyone is misusing your rights, swiping your inventions or lifting your software.

If they are sticking your brand on a product, that is easy to point out. In a complex piece of technology, it can be harder to prove that your IP is being abused. But without proof, you are not going to get any sort of remedy.”

Journey of an invention blog

The British Library has always had a strong fan base, particularly when our funding seemed to be threatened. However it is great to see a new fan in the shape of Liz Joseph an inventor. She has started a brand new blog to follow her journey of discovery as she develops her mass-market product.

She has started her route to success by making full use of the wide range of services we offer, and it is great to see her positive comments on the practical benefits these give.

She has already put in for a detailed patent search, so fingers crossed for a positive result there. I look forward to following her adventures as the days and weeks go by.

BMJ accuses us of repudiation of the role of libraries

I was rather shocked to see this posting on the British Medical Journal’s website. The author Tony Delamothe, the deputy editor of the BMJ, accuses our use of the shed advert (shown here) as “representing an absolute repudiation of the role of libraries”.

Here is the introductory paragraph from his article entitled Amnesia strikes the memory business.

“A poster advertising the British Library’s Business and Intellectual Property Centre shows a padlocked garden shed, on which the following words have been painted: “Inside is your invention. We’ll help you stop it becoming someone else’s.” Nothing could better symbolise the suburban smallmindedness underlying this initiative.”

Fortunately Stephen C. Due a medical librarian from Australia corrected Tony’s misunderstanding of the role of the Business & IP Centre in providing information and advice that helps people protect their intellectual property. As he correctly states “There is nothing in this enterprise that conflicts with the traditional values of libraries – it is essentially no different from advising an author on how to make the most of his or her rights and opportunities under copyright law.”

Thanks Stephen for leaping to our defence!

My colleagues in our Science collection have asked me to point out that the British Library-led partnership was recently chosen to run UK PubMed Central. This enables scientists to access a vast collection of biomedical research thanks to a major new initiative that aims to promote the free transfer of ideas in a bid to speed up scientific discovery. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) provides free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.

Also it seems the British Medical Journal is not entirely controversy free when it comes to open access publishing, as can be seen by this discussion thread Access controls on bmj.com – Restore true open access to bmj.com