Sports Psychologist Continues Bullshit Copyright Suits Over Retweets By School Officials

Copyright

from the none-of-this-is-normal dept

Here we go again. Many years ago, we wrote about how one sports psychologist, Dr. Keith Bell, filed a copyright lawsuit against a college over a retweet. Specifically, the retweet included an image of a single page from Bell’s book, Winning Isn’t Normal. These suits are nonsense, of course, as a retweet is not the same as publishing infringing material, not to mention all kinds of fair use defenses that would be in play here. But that wasn’t the point of the suit. The point of it, instead, was almost certainly to extract money from Bell’s victim via a settlement to make him go away.

Well, it turns out we could have written many, many more stories about Bell. As you can go and see for yourself, Bell files lawsuits over his book at a velocity that rivals some of the most litigious companies we talk about here. Sadly, the suit that is the subject of this post hasn’t shown up on Court Listener just yet. It is similar to his other suits, except this one was already settled. Bell is now claiming that his victim violated the settlement agreement it never should have signed with him.

Here’s how we got here:

In his lawsuit, Bell argues that as the author of the copyrighted book, “Winning Isn’t Normal,” he was “the first person to string words ‘winning isn’t normal’ together” and the “first person to put the phrase in writing.” The phrase, he says, expresses his philosophy for outperforming the competition in the world of sports.

The Solon district, he alleges, violated his copyright when a district coach retweeted someone else’s tweet quoting from his book. The lawsuit against the Solon district alleges that in May 2018, Bell and the district entered into a settlement agreement to resolve the dispute related to the coach’s tweet. That agreement allegedly included a non-disparagement clause and a promise by the district to halt any further use of the copyrighted work.

Bell now claims the district violated those elements of the settlement agreement, in part by failing to remove the tweet that referenced his work, and by a November 2021 phone call in which Superintendent Davis Eidahl allegedly made defamatory statements with racial undertones.

Okay, so, where to begin? That this action moves the state of this disagreement from a settlement that never should have existed and back into a copyright lawsuit is probably actually a good thing for the Solon school district. The question as to whether a retweet of this kind could be copyright infringement is a frustratingly open one, but it shouldn’t be. Retweeting doesn’t create additional copies of content, but rather a link to the tweet itself. It may make the content more visible to more people, but that isn’t the same as creating a new copy.

As to the allegations that Eidahl’s conduct violated a non-disparagement clause in the settlement agreement, that’s even more odd. Typically non-disparagement clauses prohibit defaming or otherwise negatively portraying a subject publicly or to other parties, not to the subject themselves. But of all the things Bell alleges Eidahl did to disparage him, they appear to have been in 1 on 1 interactions between the two of them.

Included in the lawsuit are Bell’s notes of a November 2021 phone call between himself and Eidahl in which Bell claims Eidahl called him the “worst person in the world” and accused him of being a “lonely old man that has no friends, no family and spends all his days searching the internet to find innocent people to steal from.” Bell also alleges that Eidahl asked “me if I was Muslim in a way that was a slur.”

The court records include a copy of an alleged email exchange between Bell and Eidahl shortly after the phone call in which the superintendent wrote: “It’s sad that you spend all your retired time devoted to preying on well-intentioned public school educators devoted to kids. It’s unfortunate that you target public school educators and public school districts to make your living in a time when public school funding is so limited. How much money is enough for you? These educators that you prey on for your own greed are hard-working, good-intentioned individuals that devote their life to kids. I was upset during our call because you continue to target individuals that have sacrificed so much for kids. Now that I’ve given it more thought, I actually feel sorry for you. I can’t imagine the character it takes to devote (your) retirement to these actions. It’s sad.”

The Muslim question is obviously gross if true. But the rest of it is only barely related to the dispute that brought about the settlement agreement. And if this was all in 1 on 1 interactions, verbal or written, I’m struggling to see how this would violate any sane anti-disparagement clause in the settlement agreement. One which, again, never should have been entered into.

So now, in theory, this will go to court. And that’s ultimately a good thing, because we need to start seeing some precedents set as to whether retweets of this nature can constitute copyright infringement or not.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright troll, fair use, keith bell, shakedown, winning isn't normal

Will The ‘Right To Repair’ Movement Survive Trumpism 2.0?

Policy

from the convenient-lip-service dept

U.S. consumer protection has been beaten to a pulp over the last few decades. Consumer protection regulators are routinely on the ropes, left understaffed, underfunded, and boxed in by an increasingly corrupt and radical 5th Circuit and Supreme Courts stocked with Trump sycophants.

One bright spot, however, has been the “right to reform” movement, or efforts to ensure that it’s easier and cheaper for consumers to repair their own technology, without being boxed in or overbilled by corporations (across numerous industries) looking to monopolize repair.

Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states contemplated such bills in 2024.

While it seems extremely unlikely that any federal right to repair legislation takes root during a second Trump administration, right to repair advocates are trying to keep the faith. In part because right to repair reform historically has broad, bipartisan support:

“Right to repair has been firmly bipartisan from the beginning,” says Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit and an occasional contributor to WIRED who has testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary about repairability policy. “I’m really not ‘doom and gloom’ on any of this. We feel very strong going into this. We have a really great working relationship with a lot of conservatives on the Hill, and we’re looking forward to continuing that.”

Of course Trumpism (read: authoritarianism) doesn’t really hew to traditional understandings of partisanship. The ideology professes to be populist, but broadly supports hugely unpopular policies across the spectrum — most notably the coming disintegration of consumer protection and public safety standards, environmental reform, female bodily autonomy, and labor rights.

Similarly, just because something has bipartisan appeal doesn’t mean it has a chance in hell of surviving Trumpism (see: net neutrality). Trumpism is populist when it’s convenient. In reality, it’s a highly performative ideology that coddles corporate power at every conceivable opportunity (see: the appointment of telecom industry coddling Brendan Carr to the FCC).

Trumpism’s primary belief, buried under all the racism, sexism, and populist bullshit, is utterly unchecked wealth accumulation free of government oversight regardless of broader public or market harm. That doesn’t gel particularly well with cracking down on corporate power’s efforts to monopolize repair.

So while I greatly admire Wiens and his work, I’m not sure the optimism he expresses in Wired is particularly realistic:

“Even if the FTC takes a hard swing to the right, I don’t think that impacts right to repair too much,” Wiens says. The position is just popular and gaining steam, he says, and he anticipates a wave of repair friendly-policies will come to red states soon. “I think it’s critical mass. I think the time has come. People see the economic benefits for their community.”

I mean yes, right to repair will remain hugely popular, because consumers across partisan ideologies don’t like being bullied by big corporations. But the idea that a Republican Congress or FTC will take this issue seriously strikes me as wish-casting.

The hope is a little brighter on the state level, where state laws continue to be passed. The problem is I’ve yet to see states actually enforce any of them, and most corporations are simply ignoring the laws without penalty. With state and legal resources about to be strained to an historic limit by a flood of battles across everything from immigration to environmental law, right to repair could easily get lost in the mix.

That’s not to say the right to repair movement won’t continue to gain traction and popularity, that advocates should abandon any hope, or that this groundswell of public support can’t be leveraged into expanded real-world change on the state or local level. But I do think keeping fascism from destroying democracy and the rule of law will overshadow more than a few reform efforts for the foreseeable future.

Filed Under: donald trump, drm, hardware, parts pairing, right to repair, software, software locks, state laws

Hertz Continues To Be Hertz, Threatens Customer With Arrest For Using Too Many Of His ‘Unlimited’ Miles

Failures

from the aggressively-pursuing-worst-customer-service-award dept

Somehow, Hertz continues to be an ongoing concern, in both senses of the word. The company that made itself infamous by repeatedly trying to get innocent renters arrested for car theft tried to put all of that behind it with a $168 million class-action lawsuit settlement in 2022.

The company then pledged to do better going forward. It didn’t say how it was going to do this, since it apparently wasn’t going to address underlying issues, like branches’ willingness to outsource vehicle retrieval to law enforcement and the extremely sloppy inventory control procedures that led to employees filing theft reports for vehicles that were parked in their parking lots.

Since then, Hertz has found new ways to be awful, like charging Tesla renters fees to refill their returned rentals with gasoline. Then there’s this incident, first reported by travel site One Mile at a Time, which details the ridiculous interaction one renter had with the company when a Hertz rep tried to charge him $10,000 for driving “too many” miles with his Unlimited Miles rental.

Long story short, it would appear that someone rented a Hertz car for a month, and the rental allowed unlimited miles. The man drove 25,000 miles on the car over the course of that month, and the agency wasn’t happy about it.

Given the number of miles driven, the Hertz representative stated that he would charge the man’s credit card an extra $10,000. As the interaction goes:

Hertz representative: “You need to leave, sir.”
Customer: “But you’re going to charge this to $10,000 to my credit?”
Hertz representative: “Yes.”
Customer: “When this literally, that’s not even allowed. I never signed…”
Hertz representative: “You show me where it says I can’t charge it.”
Customer: “Right here, it literally says I won’t get charged anything, it says miles allowed, free miles, it literally says to refer to this if there’s anything extra. I’ve never signed anything saying I can only go 100 miles a day, or anything like that, or that I would have to pay more.”
Hertz representative: “But you also never signed anything saying you were going to be allowed to drive 25,000 miles in a month.”
Customer: “No, unlimited is 100,000 miles.”
Hertz representative: “No it is not.”

While 25,000 miles seems like a literally impossible number of miles to drive in 30 days, nothing in the contract stated the “unlimited miles” the customer was entitled to was actually limited in any way.

What made this worse is that the Hertz rep told the man he was going to ding his credit card for $10,000. Then he told him to leave. Understandably, the renter didn’t leave, because doing so meant he’d soon be out $10,000. When he refused to leave before this was resolved, the rep told him he was going to have him arrested.

As One Mile at a Time points out, there’s nothing in Hertz Unlimited Miles contracts that puts a limit on miles. Nor is there any clause that allows them to charge customers just because the company (or the rep handling the return) might feel the number of miles driven is excessive. Hertz is free to refuse to rent cars to customers who’ve put “too many” (whatever that means) miles on the vehicles they’ve rented, but it can’t pretend the contract says something it doesn’t just because someone has accomplished the astounding feet of racking up four months worth of mileage in a single month.

Hertz has since issued a statement about this incident. And, considering the source, it’s a pretty ok apology for an insanely ridiculous incident.

“Customer satisfaction is our top priority at Hertz, and we sincerely regret this customer’s experience at one of our franchise locations,” Hertz’s statement reads. “Per the terms of the contract, the customer will not be billed for mileage. Our franchisee is addressing the employee’s conduct and reinforcing our customer service standards and policies to ensure they are understood and followed consistently across our locations.” 

Never mind. It’s not even really an apology. It simply says Hertz will not charge someone $10,000 for not violating the terms of the rental contract. That there’s some “addressing” going on at the franchisee level means this sort of thing likely won’t happen again at that particular branch, but it’s clear the company needs to do far more than react if it ever hopes to distance itself from the bad press the company and its employees seem to be intent on generating on a regular basis.

Filed Under: customer service, false arrest, rental cars, unlimited, unlimited miles
Companies: hertz

Daily Deal: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. This version is designed for PCs that need a new license for Windows and meet the minimum system requirements for Windows 11. If your PC is running Windows 10 and you are unable to use Windows Update to install the free upgrade to Windows 11, you will not be able to install this version of Windows 11. It’s on sale today (11/21/24) for $17.97.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Substackerati’s ‘Grave Concerns’ About White House/Big Tech Collusion Have Disappeared With Elon’s Ascension

Failures

from the (sub)stack-of-hypocrites dept

For years, a vocal group of self-described “contrarian” Substackified pundits warned about a supposed “censorship industrial complex” involving collusion between the White House and social media companies to set content moderation policies. There was just one problem: it wasn’t even close to true.

Now, with Elon Musk owning ExTwitter and Donald Trump heading back to the White House, we have a situation that actually matches what those contrarian chroniclers claimed to fear: powerful tech moguls with direct ties to the administration in a position to influence online speech. Suddenly, the grave concerns about “creeping authoritarianism” have evaporated. The double standard couldn’t be more blatant.

So, I figured it was worth calling out the hypocrisy, and MSNBC kindly gave me the space to do so:

The so-called Twitter Files, hyped by Elon Musk and handpicked journalists, were touted as smoking-gun proof of a vast conspiracy between social media and the government to violate the First Amendment. Testifying before Congress, these reporters called it a “grave threat” and evidence of “creeping authoritarianism.”

Flash forward to today. Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. And Musk, owner of the social media company X (formerly Twitter), is a top donor, surrogate and soon-to-be government “efficiency” overseer. Musk has openly used his platform to boost Trump, attack his opponents and shape the political narrative. The collusion between government and Big Tech is no longer a conspiracy theory — it’s out in the open.

Yet suddenly, all those grave concerns about the threat to democracy have evaporated. Most of the same voices who warned of shocking government overreach in the pre-Musk Twitter era are either silent about this turn of events or they’re in wild celebration of the Trump-Musk alliance. This reveals the issue wasn’t a matter of principle; it was a matter of party.

The limited space in the MSNBC piece prevented me from delving into the additional hypocrisy around how swiftly Elon Musk banned a reporter and links related to the leaked JD Vance dossier. This action was an even more extreme version of what GOP pundits have baselessly claimed Twitter did with the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.

Yet, even as the completely exaggerated claims about what happened with Twitter and the Hunter laptop are still regularly brought up by the MAGA faithful, the story about Elon and the Vance dossier disappeared after, what, two days?

But, really, the piece takes aim at the Elon/Trump enablers. The Sophist Substackerati who position themselves as brave truth tellers, standing up to government overreach: the Matt Taibbis, Michael Shellenbergers, and Bari Weisses of the world, who all seem to have forgotten what they were saying not too long ago about the hallucinated story of coziness between the White House and social media.

Taibbi called it “a grave threat to people of all political persuasions.” Shellenberger called it “the shocking and disturbing emergence of State-sponsored censorship.” A reporter from The Free Press — a publication created by Bari Weiss (another Twitter Files reporter) — Rupa Subramanya, testified in one of these hearings warning that the American government was heading down a dangerous path of censorship, calling government connections to social media “creeping authoritarianism.”

But, oh, how things have changed.

Elon Musk still owns X. Donald Trump still owns Truth Social. These are two social media networks that can drive the news and conversations about important events in the world.

Unlike before, when there was conjecture (without evidence) of grand conspiracies and connections between the White House and important social media companies, now it’s completely explicit and out in the open.

Yet, all talk of the “grave threats” and “shocking and disturbing” connections between the White House and social media have disappeared entirely. Shellenberger has called the new administration “cathartic.” Taibbi has posted numerous articles celebrating the results of the election. The Free Press has a bunch of articles praising the new Trump administration and celebrating how the election was “a win for a new generation of builders like Elon Musk.”

The “Twitter Files” pundits built their brands on a false narrative of anti-establishment rebellion against the “elite” trying to control social media. But when faced with the real thing, they’re too busy high-fiving each other to care. Their “grave concerns” about government collusion with Big Tech have suddenly evaporated now that the administration and the tech mogul are their ideological allies.

Or, as I note:

Turns out for the “Twitter Files” crew, “creeping authoritarianism” isn’t so creepy when it’s your team doing the creeping.

There’s a lot more in the piece, but I want to point out why it’s so important to call out this hypocrisy. I know that there are a bunch of cynical “too savvy for school” folks who always respond to things like this by saying “what, it surprises you that they were full of shit?”

No, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve been calling out this kind of nonsense for years. But people who don’t follow this stuff closely don’t know this. There are so many times where I hear something these nonsense peddlers pushed over and over again pop up in the mainstream media or among random people who just assume what they’re saying is accurate.

Calling out the hypocrisy isn’t to impact those in the Intellectual Derp Web. They have their captured audiences and have made it clear they don’t give a shit. But it’s important to remind everyone else what the grift is here. The cluelessness, the gaslighting, and the utter nonsense they spent years spreading for clout. Some of us recognize it for what it was.

We need to keep telling people and reminding people so that everyone else knows it’s bullshit too.

Filed Under: bari weiss, censorship industrial complex, contrarians, donald trump, elon musk, hypocrisy, matt taibbi, michael shellenberger, nonsense peddlers
Companies: truth social, twitter, x

Molson Coors Appeals The $56 Million Judgement In Stone Brewing Case

Trademark

from the try-try-again dept

When we and others discussed the massive trademark lawsuit between Molson Coors, makers of Keystone beer amongst other brands, and Stone Brewing, it was billed as a David versus Goliath scenario. Now, if I remember my bible studies correctly, once David slung a couple of well-placed rocks into Goliath’s forehead, Goliath didn’t then get up and ask for another go of it (mostly due to David removing Goliath’s head from his body, I assume).

But here, Molson Coors is doing exactly that. After being hit with a $56 million judgement by the jury in the case, Molson Coors asked for the judgement to either be thrown out or that a new trial be spun up. Both of those requests were denied by the court at the time, along with a denial of Stone Brewing’s request for a new trial because it thought Molson Coors hadn’t been hit with enough damages.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that this trademark action was over actions taken by Molson Coors, such as advertising and trade dress changes that emphasized the “Stone” in “Keystone,” and our analysis that these changes constituting trademark infringement being very questionable. I was a beer-drinker for nearly two decades (I’m in my 40s now, so now I’m a snooty wine/whisky drinker) and it strains credulity to think that anyone is going to be confused between Keystone beer and Stone Brewing beer merely because the former changed the font size of “stone” on its packaging. There were some other issues as part of the suit, such as parts of the trade dress referring only to how many “stones” were in a 15-pack and the like, but most of this rested on the prominence of “stone” on the packaging.

Well, Molson Coors is appealing, with its reasoning being mostly along those same lines.

Molson Coors argued before a panel of Ninth Circuit judges Tuesday that the decision in a trademark dispute against Stone Brewing was based on faulty legal reasoning and asked the panel to reverse the lower court verdict.

“No reasonably prudent beer consumer would ever confuse the two, especially because Stone IPA is priced at three to four times the price of the economy Keystone Light,” said Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan attorney Kathleen Sullivan, who represents Molson Coors.

Sullivan also said no rebrand ever took place to capitalize of Stone Brewing’s name, calling her client’s change in design a “trivial” packaging change — not a rebrand, but a “refresh.”

“There’s not a lot of real estate in marketing, so sometimes you have to split things into two lines.”

Now, as the post notes, some members of the panel of judges have already starting pushing back on some of Molson Coors’ argument. And some of that pushback is pretty concerning if you believe that there should be some measure of sanity in trademark law. Here’s an example.

U.S. Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber, a Bill Clinton appointee, pushed back. She noted that after the change, “stone” was much more prominent on the can, calling into question the company’s motivations.

Sullivan dismissed this reasoning. “If the Hard Rock Cafe starts italicizing ‘rock,’ that doesn’t mean it now infringes Dwayne Johnson — The Rock’s — trademark,” she countered.

“Well, it might be if he owns a restaurant,” chimed in U.S. Circuit Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Donald Trump appointee.

That’s crazy. You have to really do some mental gymnastics to imagine that any kind of customer confusion would occur with that sort of change between two brands that have achieved the kind of fame both The Hard Rock Cafe and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson have gained. And the same is true in this case. Both Keystone and Stone Brewing are established, well known brands in the beer industry. So much so, actually, that the whole “David versus Goliath” trope that we all engaged in is probably an analogy misfire.

Stone Brewing might be a David to Molson Coors’ Goliath, I suppose, but Stone Brewing is the Goliath to most of the rest of the craft brewing industry. Sure, Molson makes billions in revenue per year, but Stone Brewing makes hundreds of millions in revenue itself. Compare that with another established craft beer player, such as Rogue Ales & Spirits, which brings in about $60 million. Given the notoriety of both brands, you would think there would be very real customer confusion that Stone Brewing could have brought as trial evidence in a voluminous way. Stone Brewing attempted to bring some of that to trial with studies and some social media posts, but I would say it was all rather weak given the context.

Especially given the timeline at play here, which is another point that Molson Coors raised on appeal.

Molson Coors also says the case never should have gone to trial because Stone Brewing missed its window to sue.

Stone Brewing sent a cease and desist letter to Molson Coors in 2010 over its use of the terms “stone,” “stones” and “hold my stones,” but didn’t file a complaint until 2017 when it claims to have begun suffering from the rebranded cans.

“Once we weren’t sued by 2014, we were entitled to think they didn’t sue us,” said Sullivan, referring to the statute of limitations.

The laches defense, in other words. If we’re going by California law here, as I think we are, the analogous state law based on precedent would be a 4 year period of reasonable time to file suit, with anything beyond that being an unreasonable delay. An example of that precedent would be Pinkette Clothing, Inc. v. Cosmetic Warriors Limited, where this same court said four years was the line in the sand.

Given some of the commentary by the panel of judges, I have no idea how likely it is that Molson Coors gets any kind of win here. And that’s unfortunate, because none of this sounds like real trademark infringement to this formerly beer-soaked writer.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, beer, stone, trademark
Companies: molson coors, stone brewing

Texas Ballot Measure Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession, Says ‘Odor Of Marijuana’ Is No Longer Probable Cause

Legal Issues

from the two-birds,-one-stone dept

It looks like Dallas, Texas residents aren’t going to wait around for the courts to react to marijuana legalization. They’ve (overwhelmingly) decided to answer one of the legal questions legalization creates by adding the answer to the ballot measure itself. (h/t Jacob Sullum, Reason)

Shall the Dallas City Charter be amended by adding a new section in Chapter XXIV that reforms marijuana possession enforcement by prohibiting the Dallas Police Department from making arrests or issuing citations for marijuana possession or considering the odor of marijuana as probable cause for search or seizure, except as part of a violent felony or high priority narcotics felony investigation; making enforcement of Class A (currently, two to four ounces) and Class B (currently, up to two ounces) misdemeanor marijuana possession the Dallas Police Department’s lowest enforcement priority; and prohibiting city funds or personnel from being used to test cannabis-related substances to determine whether a substance meets the legal definition of marijuana, except in limited circumstances.

That’s going to streamline things. Normally, legalization is followed by lengthy legal battles arising from arrests/searches initiated by cops claiming to have detected the odor of a completely legal substance. Sooner or later, the courts usually get this right (but not always!) and tell law enforcement the obvious: smelling something legal cannot possibly be considered “probable cause” to believe a crime has taken place and/or contraband will be discovered if a person or place is searched.

With this ballot measure, which was approved by nearly 67% of voters, this handy excuse for warrantless searches is no longer an option for Dallas police officers. And it also takes away one of their favorite things to do: make low-level drug arrests for possession of extremely small amounts of marijuana.

So, of course, cops are already complaining about this:

However, critics like former Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia, say that four ounces is an amount used by many drug dealers. In August, he told city leaders that Dallas police officers already don’t enforce possession under two ounces, and warned increasing it to four ounces wouldn’t help lower crime.

And so are some members of the city council, who seem to believe no issue should be left solely in the hands of their constituents.

Dallas Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn said during a briefing in August the measure would benefit “drug dealers and drug houses.”

“If people would like to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, they need to be talking to their state reps and state senators, their congressmen and their (U.S.) senators,” Mendelsohn said.

What a take. And a completely predictable response from someone who doesn’t agree with the passed ballot measure. Politicians love to talk up the power of the constituency when they’re winning elections but immediately claim the people are too stupid to participate in governance when they pass measures these politicians don’t like.

The bigger problem, though, is Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, who is more than willing to take away things Texas voters have said they actually wanted:

Now that Dallas voters have approved to decriminalize larger amounts of marijuana, the city could likely face a lawsuit from the state.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued other Texas municipalities for similar attempts to make marijuana more readily available. That includes Denton, Austin and three other Texas cities.

Yet another official who likes the democratic process when things go his way, but is more than willing to remove the democracy from the democratic process if he doesn’t like the outcome. He sounds exactly like the president-elect, who spent most of his campaign telling supporters this would be the most fraudulent election ever but seems to have forgotten all about this allegedly widespread voter fraud the moment he won the popular vote.

We’ll have to see how long it takes for Dallas PD leadership to pass this information on to officers. Chances are, officers will continue to use the “odor of marijuana” excuse to engage in warrantless searches until one of them ends up in court. It always seems to take forever for messages like this to sink in when those that need to hear it the most are the least interested in hearing it.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dallas, dallas police department, drug legalization, ken paxton, probable cause, texas

It’s Perfectly Fine To Patent Inventions Obtained By Immoral Means Says European Patent Office

Patents

from the patently-immoral dept

Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, patents are not a measure of innovation, nor are they needed for companies to thrive — something even Elon Musk understands. But one aspect of patents that is rarely considered is their morality. The European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal wrestled with this issue in an interesting case involving the plant extract simalikalactone E and its use to treat malaria. As the patent admits: “simalikalactone E (SkE) was isolated from Quassia amara (Simaroubaceae), a medicinal plant widely used in the Amazon for the treatment of malaria.” In other words, the use of the plant extract to treat malaria was already known among Amazonian peoples, who naturally did not try to patent it. Related to this, an objection was raised to the patent, on the grounds that it was contrary to “morality”, as defined by Article 53 of the European Patent Convention:

European patents shall not be granted in respect of:

(a) inventions the commercial exploitation of which would be contrary to “ordre public” or morality; such exploitation shall not be deemed to be so contrary merely because it is prohibited by law or regulation in some or all of the Contracting States;

The IPKat has a good explanation of the reasoning behind the objection:

the Opponent argued that the invention represented “biopiracy” on behalf of the patentee against the indigenous people involved in the original research. Specifically, the Opponent submitted that the interactions with the indigenous communities had been conducted in an immoral fashion, involving deception and an abuse of trust. According to the Opponent, the members of the communities involved had not been fully and transparently informed of the nature of the research project, its objectives, the filing of the patent, and other risks and benefits of the project to community members and their knowledge. As such, the Opponent argued, the IP rights of the communities over their traditional knowledge had been violated. The Opponent submitted that the deception and breach of trust displayed was contrary to ordre public and would jeopardize relations between indigenous and local communities and researchers.

However, the EPO’s Board of Appeal rejected this argument for an interesting reason:

The exclusion to patentability provided for in Article 53(a) EPC requires the stated offense to morality to reside in the “commercial exploitation” of the claimed invention. The claims of the patent were directed to the formula of the antimalarial, a process of manufacturing the antimalarial and its use in therapy. Given the dire need for effective antimalarial medication, the Board of Appeal found that the commercial exploitation of these inventions would not be contrary to public morality (on the contrary, they would be beneficial to society). Specifically, the Board of Appeal made a clear distinction between the morality of the commercial exploitation of an invention, and the morality of how the invention itself occurred (r.2.14).

That is, patents can be excluded if their commercial exploitation would be immoral, but it doesn’t matter if the way the invention claimed in the patent was made turned out to be immoral. European patent law simply doesn’t care about that aspect. Fortunately, that’s not the end of this particular story, as the IPKat post explains:

Questions over the morality of scientific discovery must therefore be dealt with in a different forum than the patent office. In this case, despite the decision of the Board of Appeal, the European patent in question appears to have lapsed on all member states due to failure to pay renewal fees. The US case has similarly been abandoned. It thus appears that the substantial political pressures on the [patent-holder, the French Institute for Development Research] outside the patent system have impacted their desire and/or ability to commercialise the invention.

It’s good that this kind of pressure works, but it would be better if the patent world cared more about the morality of inventors’ actions in the first place.

Follow me @glynmoody on Bluesky and on Mastodon.

Filed Under: antimalarial, biopiracy, elon musk, epo, european patent office, exploitation, france, innovation, inventors, malaria, morality, pressure