top
Central Valley
Central Valley
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Discuss patents

Date:
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Time:
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Event Type:
Meeting
Organizer/Author:
Ellen Schwartz
Email:
Phone:
916-369-5510
Address:
P.O. Box 160564, Sacramento, CA 95816
Location Details:
SMUD Customer Service Center, 6301 “S” St., just west of 65th. Handicapped parking right in front of the building. Plenty of additional parking immediately across S Street. The 65th Street light rail station is just on the other side of 65th. You must check in with the security guard before going to the discussion. The guard can direct you to our room for the evening. (They have it under “Marxist School.”)

Tues, Oct. 25, Patently Absurd: Are patents inherently bad? What would be a good use of patent protection? Would we need patents under socialism?
See http://www.marxistschool.org for a link to NPR’s "This American Life" hosted by Ira Glass. This episode features a company called Intellectual Ventures, a collection of shell companies without employees in the East Texas town of Marshall. All these companies do is sue other companies that manufacture items that are related to the patents the shell companies own. The judge in Marshall forms juries that favor patent holders, even if they’ve neither invented nor manufactured a damn thing.
-- you can choose PLAY to listen to the podcast: or read the transcript:
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS:
•Patent Fundamentalists Threaten the Future of the Planet by Mark Weisbrot
•In Patents We Trust: How the U.S. Government Learned to Stop Worrying about Monopoly and Love Intellectual Property, by Michael Perelman.
•The Political Economy of Intellectual Property, by Michael Perelman.
•Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism By John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna.
Added to the calendar on Sat, Oct 22, 2011 6:05AM
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$80.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network