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Submission + - Small Businesses Claim U.S. Government Stealing Their Ideas (foxnews.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Fox News reports, "Hnatio claims the government has put his company, FoodquestTQ, nearly out of business by stealing his firm's software ... The FDA "took our ideas, plagiarized my doctoral dissertation on which a patent was based, and then they infringed on our patent. ...The U.S. Army settled a case in November by paying $50 million to a Texas company, Apptricity, which claimed the government took some of its software, which tracks military equipment from MRE's to troops, without paying for it. ... In 2009, NASA was ordered to pay $28.3 million to Boeing after the court found that the government infringed on the company's aluminum alloy patent. ... "There is no reason to think it can't happen," observes New York University law Professor Jeanne Fromer, an intellectual property and copyright law specialist. "The government can take patent rights, as long as they compensate for it. It is not dissimilar, in that sense, to notions of eminent domain." ... "We are hearing more frequently from companies about intellectual property theft by the government," notes John Palatiello, head of the Washington, D.C.- area lobbying group, the Business Coalition for Fair Competition ... "Companies are becoming more vocal about it." Hnatio believes there is a troubling explanation for alleged government flinching. "What we are seeing is a direct competition between the private sector and the U.S. government. The problem for small businesses is that they are simply being destroyed by their own government in spite of the fact that we hear politicians say all the time, that small business is important...it's extremely disturbing because it means we lose jobs, and it means we lose our competitive edge in the world. ...""

Submission + - Major US telecom patents system to detect, neutralize file-sharers (rt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet service provider AT&T recently added a new anti-piracy patent which features technology that can detect file-sharers on its own network, assigning risk assessment to users and potentially limiting alleged pirates’ access to file-sharing sites.

A new patent awarded to the telecom giant’s Intellectual Property division depicts a system that can classify unauthorized file-sharing users, designate them within a “risk category,” and take actions to counter future objectionable behavior.

The patent, titled “Methods, devices and computer program products for regulating network activity using a subscriber scoring system,” seems mostly aimed at combating online piracy — an ongoing target of internet service providers like AT&T, entertainment lobby groups such as the MPAA, and the Obama administration alike.

Comment Selection Bias, re. Requirements for Tenure (Score 1) 273

by balaam's ass (#44840065) Attached to: Study Shows Professors With Tenure Are Worse Teachers
The study was conducted not merely *by* Northwestern University, but *at* Northwestern University. Its universal application is not obvious, given the variety of colleges and tenure requirements available.

As has been mentioned already, such universities typically reward tenure on the basis of *research* emphasis, not teaching, so the results are hardly surprising.

I submit that these results will fail to generalize when so-called "teaching colleges" -- those whose primary means of performance review for promotion regards teaching evaluation -- are included in a study. Professors at this colleges honestly are interested in focusing on teaching, and as mentioned above it is often the older tenured faculty who accumulate awards and student accolades for excellence in teaching. Some such teaching college are in the midst of increasing research requirements for faculty as regards promotion & tenure (as well as increasing class sized) -- in short, in efforts to become more like Northwestern. This study suggests that a loss of teaching effectiveness will result. (Do you want the focus to be on teaching, or research? You can't say "both"; there are finite amounts of time and resources available.)

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