The 2006 Digital Europe Blog

While sitting here in the Brussels airport waiting for my flight to Poland and I met some soldiers from the Swedish Army (yes, they have an army). Our common interest, as is should be, is the season Peter Forsberg is having with the Flyers. For what it's worth, the Swedish soldiers wish he still played for Colorado too.

In the background, the Belgian music channel is showing the video for Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days." I am willing to admit that we Americans are unrepentant philistines as soon as Europe plays its part by not keeping cringe-inducing 1980s pop music alive. I understand the long tail, but really, Wang Chung?

- posted by Ray Gifford @ 4:13 PM | Digital Europe 2006, Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Friday, January 20, 2006

Europe as a caricature of itself

You really cannot make this stuff up, but the Europeans -- led by France and Germany -- are considering pumping billions of dollars of capital into a EU-funded search engine to challenge Google. Color me more than skeptical. Letter writer to the IHT Jim Warren pretty much sums up the cultural divide between the US and Europe.

Now, I understand that there is a compelling rationale not to get stuck with a single platform provider (indeed, this was the European rationale for creating and subsidizing Airbus, which after billions of Euros of taxpayer subsidies makes reasonably nice planes), but haven't the Eurocrats heard of Yahoo!? And, unlike aircraft manufacture, this doesn't seem to be a product with a high fixed investment entry barrier.

- posted by Ray Gifford @ 5:51 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

IP and Politics

Ray Gifford and University of Haifa's Meir Pugatch didn't see completely eye to eye on IP protection on our final panel, "Openness and the Political Economy of Intellectual Property Policy." There was some common ground, however. Pugatch said one must always find the balance between having some IP protection to spur innovation and an avoidance of too much so as not to lock off information and prevent other innovation. Ray said both too much and too little IP protection is harmful. Ray's full presentation is available here.

Pugatch provided an interesting analysis of the multiple parties involved in IP policy debates in Europe and elsewhere. He said anti-IP activists (non-corporate types anyway) live for the campaign, so if the campaign ends either with success or failure they may drift away to another crusade. Businesses, by contrast, have long-term strategies in mind and take each success and failure in a given campaign as just another step in a long battle.

Now it's time for the reception. I've discovered Prague doesn't just make good beer, they have interesting aperitifs. I'm enjoying my research.

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:29 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Standards and Crashing on Mars

The third panel here in Prague -- "Standards, Interoperability and Intellectual Property Rights" -- most reminded me of our Milan event last year, and that's a good thing. I got to hear Jim discuss standards, open source, the Free and Open Source Software movement, and of course 19th Century railroads. The prepared text of his presentation is posted here.

Also interesting was Stephen McGibbon, a Microsoft official based in Manchester. Policymakers, he said, focus a great deal on technical interoperability. But he said in the world of PCs, servers and the Internet, technical interoperability issues are rare. There are other, more important complications, however. One is legal interoperability. As an example, he said there's a move afoot in the EU to develop a high-tech ID that, say, an Austrian could use in the UK. But McGibbon noted that the UK wouldn't legally recognize it regardless of its technical design, and France and Germany have laws against issuing numerical IDs. The more colorful example was a semantic interoperability issue. Many of us remember when NASA's Mars Explorer crashed on the Red Planet in 1999 because it was sent commands in Imperial units when it was expecting metric commands. That was not a technical interoperability issue, McGibbon said, but a semantic one. Both sets of numbers would have worked, but there was a "language" barrier between engineer and spacecraft.

Oh, and McGibbon didn't stick to the space age. He also discussed 19th Century railroads, opening his presentation addressing the selection of track width in the UK and the US.

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 9:33 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Gross on Internet Governance

The Internet governance debate isn't just a topic for diplomats, U.S. Ambassador David Gross told the conference here today. It's a critical cultural, economic and political issue, he said.

Gross is still positive about how this issue was dealt with at Phase 2 of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), at which proposals to "internationalize" Internet governance were defeated. Instead, a five-year charter was created for a discussion body to be convened -- but not run -- by the UN secretary general, which will allow any government or interested party to discuss a broad range of Internet issues. He saw this potential for dialogue as very important. But he saw more positives emerging from Tunis:

Continue reading Gross on Internet Governance . . .

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 8:34 AM | Digital Europe 2006, Free Speech, Internet, Internet Governance | TrackBacks (0)

Innovate or Imitate

The conference heard a compelling perspective on software patents from Guenther Schmalz, director of IP for Europe for SAP, the largest European software maker and the third-largest software maker in the world. SAP burst on the scene in the early1970s, like Microsoft moving into areas of software that IBM had no interest in commoditizing. For years SAP grew and grew and had no patents. Now they're ramping up a major patent office with a few dozen attorneys around the world. Why? "Times have changed," Schmalz said. In the early days, SAP's competitors were way behind, but now competitors are everywhere. Patents are the only way for SAP to ensure returns on its development investment, he said, adding that copyright is no solution, as the actual writing of code only makes up about 20% of the development of software.

"Those who drive innovation need patents," he said. "Those who don't imitate."

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 6:45 AM | Digital Europe 2006, Patents, Software | TrackBacks (0)

Virtualization of Inventions

Martin Campbell-Kelly of the University of Warwick paints an interesting historical narrative about software patents; namely, that they are simply a natural progression toward the "virtualization of invention." What used to be mechanical, and then became integrated into hardware, finally is ultimately virtualized into pure software products. For examples, he cites cryptography machines and postage metering.

He also adds a very important point about the value of software patents: it allows the "little guy" in agains the entrenched incumbents. In the postal meter markets, Pitney-Bowes was the original inventor and patent-holder on postage meter devices, and software patenting allowed virtual postage meter companies to enter the market without being crushed by the incumbent.

- posted by Ray Gifford @ 5:44 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

WTO, Yes or No?

Our first panel on the economics of IP here involved a friendly debate between Jiri Matolin, a Czech IP attorney, and Dr. Meir Pugatch of the University of Haifa, an afternoon panelist speaking during this session from the audience. The topic? The effectiveness/appropriateness of the TRIPs portion of WTO.

Continue reading WTO, Yes or No? . . .

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:12 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

A Czech Perspective on IP

Some folks have asked me in recent months, "Why did PFF decide to do its latest European conference in Prague?" Well, I could say it was so we could admire Prague Castle or the Charles Bridge. We did do that, but one reason was because Prague has government officials like Dana Berova, the Czech Minister of Informatics. She is an example of why many in Europe feel the former Eastern bloc nations are the best hope for vibrant economic growth in Europe.

Continue reading A Czech Perspective on IP . . .

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:05 AM | Digital Europe 2006, Free Culture Movement, International | TrackBacks (0)

How the Czechs are different from us

A U.S.-based discussion of patents and intellectual property rights might go back all the way, say, to the 1980s to discuss the premises of things like software patents and problems with the patent office. By contrast, Dr. Karel Cada, President of the Czech Industrial Property Office, opens his discussion of patents by citing Aristotle, Kant, Leibnitz, John Stuart Mill and Abraham Lincoln. Cool (that's the official American reaction at a more intellectually-grounded European).

- posted by Ray Gifford @ 4:01 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Prague Winter

PFF is here in Prague co-hosting the second Digital Europe conference with the Czech-based CERGE-EI and the Liberalni Institute. Not surprisingly, we are here talking about intellectual property, appropriately in a room constructed by a 19th Century Czech railroad baron.

The impulse to hold this conference is straightforward: intellectual property rights will be the most important international issue involving private law for the next century. Like the evolution of the Law Merchant and Law of the Sea, the treatment of intellectual property in and between countries will determine how economies evolve, where capital flows and how innovation occurs. The questions are extraordinariy difficult, and the political economy pressures are immense.

All that, and it is extraordinarily cold here. Lesson #1: hold conferences in the Spring.

- posted by Ray Gifford @ 3:41 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday, January 15, 2006

More Impressions of Globalization

The attendant on the platform at the Petrin Lookout Tower, 200 feet in the air in the cold of a Prague January, eyes closed and lost in listening to his iPod.

And near the entrance to the cable car leading up the hill to the Tower, a Mexican restaurant advertising fajitas.

The restaurant manu printed in seven languages.

P.S. Just ran into Patrick -- who says that Prague has great Tex-Mex.

- posted by James DeLong @ 11:05 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Globalization

I just finished breakfast at the Hotel Pariz in Prague, where we are preparing for PFF's Tuesday conference on Interoperability and Innovation Examined in the Digital Age. (Actually, at the moment we are goofing off, but don't tell Ray that. He thinks we got here early to work.)

New Year's Day breakfast was in the Yellowstone Snow Lodge in Wyoming; Thanksgiving Day was in Hong Kong, and two days before that in the Ha-Noi Hilton (the new one rather than the one in which my colleague Orson Swindle stayed 35 years ago).

A striking feature of all these occasions was the sameness of dress one sees. The same casual jeans, jackets, and parkas are worn world-wide. It is a stunning fact, given that that 200 years ago a shirt was a valuable item (and in parts of the world it still is, of course.) It represented a respectable input of human time and capital. Now, clothes are produced in profusion, an incalculable tide of riches.

And the major factor in the change was ideas -- learning how to build the machines that could do the work of thousands of people quickly and easily, which meant that in exchange for an hour tending the machine each of those people can buy more clothes than he or she can hand-sew in years of labor.

And that's why we are in Prague -- to talk about how to ensure that this economy of the mind continues to exand, until the cornucopia of human betterment is full for everyone in the world. And we are here to oppose those who think that somehow such progress can be achieved by magic, without respect for the hard-headed institutions of proper incentive structures, rule of law, property rights, and governments that are restrained from rent-seeking and value destruction.

Amended 01-16-06.

- posted by James DeLong @ 3:15 AM | Digital Europe 2006 | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday, December 8, 2005

Software Piracy Figures

Reuters reports on the latest study from the IDC study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance on international piracy. It found that about 35% of the world's software is pirated:

The study, covering 70 countries representing 99 percent of the world's information technology spending, said a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth.

The report also said the piracy rate ran as high as 90 percent in China and 87 percent in Russia.

This report comes a day after a congressional hearing on piracy in Russia and China, not limited to software. Washington Internet Daily (subscription required) reported that International Intellectual Property Alliance President Eric Smith told the subcommittee that "China has made 'negligible progress' and 'Russia has actually gotten worse' in addressing piracy since the last report from the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee in May."

Those two nations obviously are notorious for piracy, but Europe's software piracy rate in the BSA-funded study was 35 percent. That's down from almost 80 percent in 1992 before new EU policies, but as a BSA rep in Europe points out, it's 20 times the shoplifting rate.

At our PFF holiday party last night (if you missed it you missed out on a great time!) I was discussing our upcoming trip to Prague and comparing it to our February trip to Milan and Brussels. Both trips address intellectual property protection. Someone asked me, "How come PFF keeps going abroad?"

I think the above provides some reasons why.

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:45 AM | Digital Europe 2006, International, Software | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday, December 1, 2005

Prague, Patents and Innovation

PFF announced this week that it's going back to Europe for a second consecutive year, with Digital Europe 2006. We will again discuss with government leaders, industry executives and academics the importance of intellectual property in a global digital economy. PFF's Ray Gifford, Tom Lenard, Jim DeLong and I will be in Prague on January 17th, co-hosting an all day conference with CERGE-EI and the Liberalni Institut titled "Intellectual Property and Innovation in the Digital World."

The conference on IP comes at a critical time for European policymakers, now halfway through the 10-year Lisbon Strategy aimed at making Europe competitive economically with the United States.

Continue reading Prague, Patents and Innovation . . .

- posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:55 PM | Digital Europe 2006, International, Patents | TrackBacks (0)