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Conflict arises when companies with the essential technology feel they’re being taken advantage of under the FRAND system.

“Innovators [need] to obtain injunctions to stop the use and sale of products infringing on their inventions,” a company called Empire IP said in comments on the policy shift. “The result of this policy would be less innovation in the United States and a further shift in global technological leadership to China and other competitors.”

Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton et al 23, ISEF Scholar, she received her BLL and MLL degrees at Bar-Ilan prior to earning her PhD at the University of Michigan School of Law as an ISEF International Fellow, Orit Fischman-Afori & Hillel Billauer , Volume 30 Issue 2, George Mason Law Review, “The Future of Criminal Enforcement of Copyright: The Promise of Civil Enforcement”, https://lawreview.gmu.edu/print__issues/the-future-of-criminal-enforcement-of-copyright-the-promise-of-civil-enforcement/, kcab

B. Practical Use and Effect of Criminal Copyright Enforcement in the U.S.

“In an effort to make it harder for patent trolls to obtain injunctions, a bad decision from the Supreme Court weakened the patent system for everyone. Overruling eBay would instantly shift the balance of negotiating power back to even. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen anytime soon.”

https://depositphotos.com/216836112/stock-photo-fake-dictionary-dictionary-definition-word.htmlAs anyone who follows the United States Supreme Court knows, the Court has historically been extremely fond of taking important cases with cutting edge issues, only to dodge the real issues and address some insignificant procedural or hyper-technical issue. Such disappointment is all too frequent, so Supreme Court watchers are seldom surprised when the Court passes on an opportunity to breathe clarity into otherwise unsettled waters. But what the Supreme Court did in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange LLC, 547 U.S. 388 (2006) was far more disappointing. In eBay, the Supreme Court decided to throw out longstanding and well-established Federal Circuit jurisprudence and offered little or nothing in its place. The result has been an extraordinary shift in the balance of power between patent owners and infringers.

For decades, obtaining an injunction in a copyright or trademark case was simple: Show success on the merits (or likely success on the merits, at the preliminary injunction stage), and injunctive relief was usually automatically yours. Then, in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a patent case called eBay Inc. v. MercExchange LLC, which upended the standard for obtaining injunctive relief in patent cases. Around 2010, appellate courts began to apply eBay to copyright cases; the past few months have seen the first instances of appellate courts’ application of eBay to cases under the Lanham Act.

The change in the injunction standard has had a significant impact on the way copyright and trademark plaintiffs do and should prepare their cases for seeking injunctions, and it provides new angles for defendants looking to oppose injunctive relief. If the trend in copyright law is any indicator, the forecast for 2015 shows expansion of the eBay standard in Lanham Act cases. With that in mind, this article will navigate the new legal standards and identify some of the types of cases that may not be as amenable to injunctive relief as they were before.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court denied inventor Jeffrey Killian’s petition for a rehearing in his case asking the Court to provide clear guidance on – or else throw out – the Alice/Mayo test for patent eligibility.

The Supreme Court denied Killian’s original petition in early October, but Killian filed a request for rehearing several weeks later.

A little-known federal agency might be our most powerful asset in the race for global tech leadership. The International Trade Commission (ITC) has the power to deter patent infringement abroad and at home by blocking infringers’ access to the huge American market.

The ITC is our best hope to check the mounting global problem of theft of American intellectual property — the cornerstone of our high-tech economy. It’s up to policymakers to make sure this asset gets deployed to the full extent of the law.

A little-known federal agency might be our most powerful asset in the race for global tech leadership. The International Trade Commission (ITC) has the power to deter patent infringement abroad and at home by blocking infringers’ access to the huge American market.

The ITC is our best hope to check the mounting global problem of theft of American intellectual property — the cornerstone of our high-tech economy. It’s up to policymakers to make sure this asset gets deployed to the full extent of the law.

On the other side of the Atlantic, and more or less at the same time as Wallace-Wells was getting attention too, David Bendell (2018) generated controversy with a paper and subsequent edited book on what he called deep adaptation (Bendell and Read 2021). When the paper was rejected by a journal he self-published it online, arguing that contemporary trajectories, especially melting permafrost and methane releases in the Arctic, were happening much faster than conventional analyses were suggesting. The acceleration of climate change suggested to Bendell that conventional assumptions about climate adaptation were underestimating what was coming and that civilization was unlikely to cope without dramatic social and economic change. These he saw as unlikely to transpire in a timely manner, hence societal collapse looms in the near term future. Some of these arguments were influential with parts of the Extinction Rebellion movement in Britain in particular.

One notable point in Bendell’s argument is that his paper was rejected on the grounds that it didn’t engage the contemporary social science literature. But, he argued, that was his point; conventional social science assumes that the future will be more or less the same as the present, hence it doesn’t generate the kind of material that Bendell is concerned about, a rapid climate transition that is outside what conventional projections, and economic analyses in particular, are assuming. Not surprisingly there wasn’t much of a social science literature for him to engage! While Bendell doesn’t use Michael Albert’s (2020) formulation of social science as committed to “continuationism”, the argument is loosely consistent with the use of this term. Projections into the future assume that social patterns change gradually, not abruptly.

As was the case of competitive democracy, our definition of liberalism has the counterintuitive implication that a society can have a maximal level of liberalism even if it does not grant liberal rights to the majority of the population (e.g., a society with liberal rights for property-owning white men, but there is little legal protection for other groups and a slave economy). However, we do not mean to say that such a society should be classified as a liberal democracy (see Appendix C), or even liberal in the everyday sense of the word.

What low levels of liberalism might look like: Parliamentary sovereignty, tyranny of the majority, authoritarian democracy, totalitarianism.

The ability of a totalitarian regime to endure over a long time is a critical determinant in assessing the threat it could pose. Authoritarian regimes tend to last longer than totalitarian ones and may arguably have been one of the most common forms of governance throughout human history. Caplan, writing about the durability of totalitarianism, notes that “the best thing one can say about totalitarian regimes is that the main ones did not last very long” (Caplan 2008, 507). It is unclear whether the short lifespan of history’s totalitarian regimes has been related to events of those times or if it is an inherent feature of totalitarian systems.

Technology plays a complex role in governance, with the overall effect of creating the possibility to enhance the power of those who control it. Bertrand Russell wrote in Authority and the Individual that technological development enables the possibility of more intense government control (Russell 1949). Technology and power are inexorably interconnected, and the control offered by technological power was essential to the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century (van der Laan 1997). Many tensions exist in the relationships between totalitarianism and technology. Technological development is complex and unwise to halt. The profits to be made, improvements to the quality of life, and the ability to mitigate disaster ensure that advancements in most emerging technologies will continue. At the same time, these technologies may enable totalitarian regimes to rise and stay in power. Further, the ability to mitigate many existential risks discussed in this book, such as an engineered pandemic, may require building sophisticated surveillance systems, which, in turn, could be the very technology that allows a totalitarian regime to take control. It may be difficult to garner political will behind the risk of not being able to cure most diseases or increase lifespan for fear of being killed by a possible future regime in the next century (Caplan 2008).

Noah Taylor 23, peace researcher and facilitator. He is a lecturer in the MA program in Peace, Security, Development, and International Conflict Transformation at the University of Innsbruck and the Instituto Paz e Mente, Brazil, 3/22/23, Existential Risks In Peace and Conflict Studies, “Totalitarianism Risk and Peace”, pg 191-204, kcab

Almost tautologically, one of the safeguards against global totalitarianism is the existence of non-totalitarian countries. Historically when totalitarian regimes exist alongside more moderate ones, the comparison between the two systems motivates forces that cause regimes to fall. Caplan (2008) refers to this as the “totalitarian dilemma” where “as long as totalitarian states co-exist with non-totalitarian ones, they have to expose potential successors to demoralizing outside influences to avoid falling dangerously behind their rivals” (509). The converse of this relationship is also likely true that totalitarian states would become more politically stable if there were no other non-totalitarian states in the world.

The Biden administration and Congress have recently made a series of commitments to support industries that are of high strategic importance. The Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act provide much-needed resources to bolster advances in green energy and increase our domestic supply of semiconductors – two critical long-term priorities.

Yet, there’s another significant challenge facing our innovation economy, one that often goes under reported. Abusive patent lawsuits against some of our most innovative companies are on the rise, forcing more and more successful businesses to delay hiring new workers, raising wages, and developing new products. Instead, they’re forced to spend money defending themselves against meritless accusations.

Innovation contributes to economic growth by creating new knowledge and increasing productivity in society (Arrow, 1962; Brown et al., 2009; Rivera-Batiz & Romer, 1991; Sorenson & Fleming, 2004). Intellectual property rights facilitate and increase firms’ incentives to innovate by providing formal legal protection against expropriation (Arora & Gambardella, 2010a, 2010b; Hu & Png, 2013; Levin et al., 1987). Over the past three decades, we have witnessed innovation-driven economic growth in developed economies like that of the United States (US), which is fueled by technological breakthroughs under the protection of the patent system. At the same time, observers have noted that patent litigations initiated by non-practicing entities (NPEs) have surged since the 2000s (Bessen & Meurer, 2013; Liang, 2010). NPEs, also commonly known as “patent trolls,” are firms that amass patents and build their portfolios to enforce their intellectual property rights and litigate against potential infringers but have little or no intention of further developing these patents.1 Therefore, NPEs often initiate patent infringement lawsuits with little or no genuine intent of developing or implementing their intellectual property rights. Their primary goal is to earn monetary profits through private remedies or out-of-court settlements (Cohen et al., 2016, 2019).

Recent studies have shown that NPEs harm the collective welfare of society and reduce firms’ research and development (R&D) investment. Bessen, Ford, and Meurer (2011) find that NPE litigations have cost defendants about half a trillion US dollars of wealth between 1990 and 2010. Cohen, Gurun, and Kominers (2016, 2019) find that firms reduce their innovation activities after being targeted by NPEs. Recent anecdotal evidence has also shown that NPEs may also hurt public health and downstream research by suing medical device testing companies that develop devices used in COVID19 testing.2 However, there is scant empirical evidence of the consequence of rising NPE litigation threats on firm innovation strategies and trajectories.

‘The 2020s are almost halfway over and are on course to be the most difficult decade for the global economy since the 1930s. Every finance minister and central bank governor at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington last week knows that, even if they were not prepared to admit it publicly.’ – An excerpt from April 21 Guardian published article ‘Most difficult global outlook since 1930s heralds end of US-led world order’

The title of April 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) report by International Monetary Fund (IMF, or simply the ‘Fund’) being ‘Steady but slow, resilience and divergence’, and a rather upbeat mood of the Fund with regard to growth prospects, whereby IMF’s economic counsellor, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, pointed out in the foreword to the Report: ‘The global economy remains remarkably resilient, with growth holding steady as inflation returns to target. …despite many gloomy predictions, the world avoided a recession, the banking system proved largely resilient, and major emerging market economies did not suffer sudden stops.’

The pandemic, war in Ukraine, the threat to food security, and the resurgence of global poverty. Heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather events. These are not random shocks. Nor are they a perfect storm in the conventional sense, a one-off conjuncture of bad events. We face instead a confluence of lasting structural insecurities—geopolitical, economic, and existential—each reinforcing the other. We have entered a perfect long storm.

We cannot wish away these insecurities or hope that problems that occupy one part of the world will not rebound on others. COVID-19 and its repeated mutations have brought that reality home, at immense human and economic cost everywhere. We can only restore optimism by recognizing the gravity and collective nature of the threats we face and organizing ourselves more effectively to address them.

Chief among those challenges is how humanity manages the dangers of its own genius. Advances in weaponry, biology, and computing could spell the end of the species, either through deliberate misuse or a large-scale accident. Societies face risks whose sheer scale could paralyze any concerted action. But governments can and must take meaningful steps today to ensure the survival of the species without forgoing the benefits of technological progress. Indeed, the world will need innovation to overcome several cataclysmic dangers it already faces—humanity needs to be able to generate and store clean energy, detect novel diseases when they can still be contained, and maintain peace between the great powers without relying on a delicate balance of nuclear-enabled mutually assured destruction.

Far from a safe resting place, the technological and institutional status quo is a precarious predicament from which societies need to escape. To lay the groundwork for this escape, governments must become more aware of the risks they face and develop a robust institutional apparatus for managing them. This includes embedding a concern for worst-case scenarios into relevant areas of policymaking and embracing an idea known as “differential technological development”—reining in work that would produce potentially dangerous outcomes, such as biological research that can be weaponized, while funding and otherwise accelerating those technologies that would help reduce risk, such as wastewater monitoring for pathogen detection.

The dangers from the previously discussed existential and global catastrophic risks will be mitigated or magnified by how humanity governs itself. There are ways in which forms of governance could pose an existential threat to humanity (Borders 2021). Andrew Leigh, in his recent book What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics, summarizes the dangers of totalitarianism, “Reducing catastrophic risk is fundamentally a political challenge. Get the politics wrong this century, and our species could face oblivion. Get the politics right, and humanity could endure for millennia to come” (2021, 236). A lack of planning and ineffective cooperation and coordination, particularly at the international level, could exacerbate other risks by increasing humanity’s vulnerability and reducing resilience. A global turn toward totalitarianism or the turn of enough powerful states could become an existential risk.

The goal of an authoritarian government is to control its people and suppress, through force and coercion, challenges to its rule (Palouš 2008). Totalitarianism goes beyond the goals and methods of authoritarian governments. In addition to getting into and staying in power, totalitarianism has the goal of establishing total control over the population, not merely enough control to suppress a rebellion. The authoritarian wants to control humans, and the totalitarian wants control over human naturekjok. The methods used by totalitarian governments are aimed at this radical behavior change. To do so, they utilize threats of harsh punishment and carry out enough punishments that the threats are believed. One of the most effective ways of gaining credibility to threats is to carry them out on a large scale. This tactic is further reinforced when the regimes designate specific groups of people to be a problem or a threat based on an identity that cannot change, thus requiring mass murder to remove them (Caplan 2008).

Freedom of speech was once one of the West’s most cherished rights, but in the modern-day governments are attempting to strip us of this right. In almost all Western nations legislation is being introduced to thwart our ability to speak freely. Politicians and bureaucrats justify this anti-free speech stance in the name of the “greater good”. They claim that with more control over what people say, fewer people will be led astray by misinformation and disinformation and fewer people will be harmed by the criticisms and insults of hate speech. In this video we make the case that censoring and criminalizing the expression of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech is an existential threat to a free and prosperous society.

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

The Supreme Court of the United States issued a much-awaited decision on May 9, 2024, in Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy, resolving a circuit split in favor of copyright plaintiffs and rejecting a “three-year damages cap” on the recoverable damages for infringement claims. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that so long as a plaintiff’s claims are timely, “[t]he Copyright Act contains no separate time-based limit on monetary recovery,” and accordingly, damages are not restricted by the three-year statute of limitations period described in 17 U.S.C. § 507(b). The Court, however, was careful to limit its decision to damages, and explicitly did not opine on whether a plaintiff’s claims brought after the three-year limitations period under the “so-called discovery rule” would be timely in the first place. Thus, while the decision is a clear victory for copyright plaintiffs in cases when the discovery rule applies to claims brought more than three years following an infringement, this victory may be short-lived pending future guidance from the Supreme Court.

The underlying dispute in Warner Chappell stemmed from purported copyright infringement dating back 10 years before the suit was filed. Since some of the alleged infringing activity occurred outside the three-year statute of limitations period provided by the Copyright Act, the plaintiff relied on the discovery rule. As noted in the Supreme Court’s decision, the timeliness of the lawsuit was not challenged in the lower courts. The sole question presented to the Supreme Court, therefore, was whether the plaintiff could recover damages dating to more than three years prior to the filing of the lawsuit.

There are approximately 3.04 trillion trees on planet Earth (Crowther et al 15), covering 31% of the world’s land surfacew1. Today, for Earth day, we’re taking a look at trees. Around 15 billion trees are cut down each year. So, hypothetically speaking, it would take just over 200 years for the world’s forests to completely disappear. While this scenario is unlikely, what would be the consequences of a tree-free planet? Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious difference – oxygen concentration. A lack of oxygen? Oxygen makes up roughly 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere, but you probably know that already. What you might be surprised to find out, however, is that only half of this oxygen is produced through photosynthesis in trees and other plants on land. The other half is produced in oceans, by microscopic marine organisms called phytoplankton. The environment would not be devoid of oxygen if all trees were lost but the oxygen level would be lower. Would it be sufficient for humans to survive? In one year, a mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen as ten people breathe. If phytoplankton provides us with half our required oxygen, at current population levels we could survive on Earth for at least 4000 years before the oxygen store ran empty. However, that’s not considering a number of other factors: increasing population size, for example, would reduce the amount of oxygen available, whilst phytoplankton blooms due to an abundance of carbon dioxide could increase oxygen levels. Suffocating smog Whilst there may be enough oxygen for humans to survive on Earth, at least to begin with, the air we breathe could still be responsible for our demise. Like giant filters, trees help to cut down on pollution levels. Leaves intercept airborne particles and ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other greenhouse gases are absorbed through the leaves stomata. In 2012, outdoor air pollution was estimated to cause 3.7 million premature deaths worldwidew2. Imagine the impact removing these environmental sieves would have on humankind. Air-pollution masks would become a necessity and bottled ‘clean air’ could come at a premium. Full of hot air? Armed with pollution masks, would the climate and temperature still be suitable for us? One important consideration is carbon dioxide. In one year, an acre of mature trees soaks up the same amount of carbon dioxide that we produce by driving the average car 26 000 miles. Since human activities like this increase the normal level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, cutting down trees would tip the balance even further, not to mention the enormous amount of stored carbon that would be released from doing so. Deforestation is already responsible for up to 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and you might think that an overwhelming increase in carbon dioxide would result in a much warmer planet. However, the relationship between trees and global temperature is much more complicated. Energy and water fluxes between trees and the atmosphere also play a role and a tree’s colour, for example, can affect the amount of the Sun’s energy that is absorbed or reflected. Studies have shown that Europe’s trees have actually caused a slight increase in regional temperatures since 1750w3, while transpiration from plants in tropical forests cools the surface temperature. Therefore, whether the temperature becomes too hot to handle could depend on many factors, although a recent study concluded that reducing forest size increases average air surface temperatures in all climate zones (Alkama & Cescatti 16).