M&S are being a bit pathetic, if you ask me.

From the BBC:

Marks & Spencer has begun legal action against Aldi, arguing the supermarket's Cuthbert the Caterpillar cake infringes its Colin the Caterpillar trademark. M&S argues that their similarity leads consumers to believe they are of the same standard and "rides on the coat-tails" of M&S's reputation.

It lodged an intellectual property claim with the High Court this week. M&S wants Aldi to remove the product from sale and agree not to sell anything similar in the future. The retailer has three trademarks relating to Colin, which it believes means Colin has acquired and retains an enhanced distinctive character and reputation.

The product was launched around 30 years ago. Colin's appearance has been substantially unchanged since around 2004, except for adaptations for events such as Halloween and Christmas, and related products such as Connie the Caterpillar.

A spokesman said: "Because we know the M&S brand is special to our customers and they expect only the very best from us, love and care goes into every M&S product on our shelves.

"It could be radioactive or poisonous"

From www.airspacemag.com, on the immediate aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003:

Hemphill City Manager Don Iles arrived at the fire station as a radio report came in from a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer on US 96 near Bronson. “There’s a big metal object in the middle of the highway. It gouged the road. I’m looking at it, but I don’t know what to make of it.”

The dispatcher asked if it had any identifying marks or numbers. The DPS trooper said, “Yeah, but it’s only partial.” He read back the numbers to the dispatcher, who then told him to wait. The trooper said he would stay at the scene by the object and keep vehicles from running over it.

A few minutes later, the dispatcher came back on and said, “I’ve just been in touch with NASA. Please do not pick up or touch any of the material, because it could be radioactive or poisonous.”

NASA later admitted that it was highly unlikely that any of the debris was radioactive or poisonous, it's just that they didn't want people keeping chunks of it as souvenirs or sticking them on eBay. NASA wanted to be able to collect the debris themselves in 'pristine' condition to help them reconstruct what went wrong. Fair enough, you might think.
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From the BBC:

Police have warned students in the UK against using a website that they say lets users "illegally access" millions of scientific research papers. The City of London police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit says using the Sci-Hub website could "pose a threat" to students' personal data. The police are concerned that users of the "Russia-based website" could have information taken and misused online.

The Sci-Hub website says it "removes all barriers" to science. It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be "knowledge to all".

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this are, it seems to me that the police are trying NASA's tactic. They could have reminded people that downloading from such sites is a breach of copyright, which is a civil offence that can be treated as a criminal offence in extreme cases. But nobody takes this seriously nowadays as they know the chances of somebody being take to court for downloading something from the internet is to all and intents and purposes zero, so the police went for the "don't touch! This is radioactive and poisonous!" strategy.

Forewarned is forearmed. It's quite possible that the site *is* a phishing operation, in which case the sensible thing to do is to download from it using a public computer or via a VPN or something, which has the added bonus of making the copyright breach even harder to trace. Which neatly solves both problems from the students' point of view.

Fun Online Polls: Intellectual Property rights & Complete Chaos

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

When a patent or copyright expires, does society as a whole...

become slightly wealthier - 71%
stay exactly the same - 26%
becomes slightly poorer - 3%

Which must be the correct answer.

Shakespeare's plays are long out of copyright, but they are still there for everybody to enjoy (or not as the case may be). Everybody can manufacture ring-pull cans without having to pay a fraction of a penny licence fee to the original inventor/designer for each one, and so on and so forth. Overall, the wealth is still there, it is just shared out slightly differently (and probably more efficiently).

Of course there is a loss to the original owner when his IP rights lapse but that is more than outweighed by the gain to 'everybody else'. Worst case, it's a break even.

Think about it, there are four variables in deciding what protection to grant:
- whether it gets protection in the first place,
- how expensive the registration procedure is,
- how long the protection should last, and
- to the extent a government taxes earned income, there is an argument for taxing such protected income before it taxes anything else.

Have we got the balance right? In some respects, no, but broadly speaking, we're not far off. Governments have to incentivise innovation without stifling competition, and this is a good way of doing it.

If the 3% who voted "slightly poorer" are correct, then that must mean that patents and copyrights should be protected for infinity, which is clearly wrong, or else we'd have it (doesn't apply to trademarks, they are protected in perpetuity).

Now, if we agree that government protection of what is ultimately earned income should only be time limited, why do we think that governments have the right to sell off the freehold of land for one initial payment, often centuries ago, and protect that source of unearned income in perpetuity?

Is there not a mismatch here?
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This week's Fun Online Poll.

Complete and utter chaos (multiple selections allowed).

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls:

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Of the 32 national teams at the FIFA World Cup, how many will end up disappointing their fans?

Selection
A few - 1%
About half - 4%
Most - 5%
Nearly all - 17%
All but one - 67%
All - 6%

My thoughts exactly: all but one. It's all just manufactured misery, I doubt very much whether the joy felt by the winning team's fans/nationals is greater than the disappointment felt by all the others, so such competitions are a negative sum game.
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I was musing about life, the universe and everything recently when an interesting analogy occurred to me.

That's the basis of this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Topshop set for £3m windfall after it wins High Court battle with singer Rihanna for using its logo on a T-shirt"

From The Daily Mail

* Retailer said it could harm reputation with customers who assume it is 'approved'
* Rihanna said she had bought licence for image - downloaded from the Internet
* Singer told court Topshop's team requested clothes after writ was issued
* High Court judge Justice Birss found in the retailer's favour today
* Rihanna says she intends to appeal and finds ruling 'perplexing'

Clothing giant Topshop today won a High Court fight with pop superstar Rihanna for wearing an T-shirt with their logo on it in a case that could be worth £3million.

The store claimed the ‘unendorsed’ T-shirt with a photograph of one of their stores with the logo clearly visible may have damaged their image because customers could have thought it was genuine merchandise.
Arcadia Group Brands Ltd, who sued under the trading name Topshop, claimed they are is entitled to damages from the Barbadian star, whose real name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, over the unauthorised use of the image.

Rihanna disputed their claim but Judge Mr Justice Birss ruled in their favour today after a hearing in London, but will decide on damages at a later date.

Yes, Ms Hill, but only up to a point...

From The International Business Times:

Reclusive soul superstar Lauryn Hill has been jailed over an enormous unpaid tax bill...

Hill blasted pop music for a "climate of hostility, false entitlement,(1) manipulation, racial prejudice,(2) sexism (3) and ageism.(4) "Over-commercialisation and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual."

During her trial, Hill claimed she is still forced to live under the pernicious economic hierarchy imposed by the slave trade. She told the court: "I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me."(5)

1) I'll return to that point.

2) Ms Hill is Afro-Caribbean and she appears to have done well for herself out of all this.

3) Ms Hill is a woman, see previous comment.

4) She was young and cute when she started, that was part of the selling point.

None of the above is relevant to whether tax is due on her royalty income (and she doesn't appear to be complaining about the $1 million which rolls in every year on the back of one halfway decent hit record back in the 1990s).

5) Yes, most of us are descended from slaves, serfs, peasants etc, that's irrelevant. More importantly, what Ms Hill doesn't mention is that one of the fine services which this "whole pernicious economic hierarchy" offers people in her position is copyright protection (primarily the right to sue in the courts but also criminal sanctions against unauthorised copying in many countries) within and across borders. Without that protection, the income of a "reclusive soul superstar" would be precisely f- all. She'd have to get off her arse and go and do concerts to earn money.

If Ms Hill were happy to live outside the "whole pernicious economic hierarchy", then the quid pro quo is that she'd be happy for other people to copy her records and sell them without paying her a red cent. But she isn't, and seeing as in the absence of the state machinery to protect her copyright her income would be precisely $nil I don't see what's the harm in her unofficial collection agency (the US government) taking a cut.
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We can of course extend this simple logic - you should only have to pay tax on transactions which would otherwise be unenforceable - to just about anything you can think of, and this gives us a very good steer indeed as to what should be taxed and what shouldn't.

For example - is it fair for the UK government to collect £75 million a year by auctioning off fancy number plates? The question answers itself - those paying the "tax" clearly think it is fair, or else they wouldn't pay it and most people are happy to make do with whatever number plate is on the car.

For example - some contracts are legal but unenforceable (gambling, prostitution*), so betting shops and prostitutes demand cash upfront. Some contracts are illegal and unenforceable (contract for sale of 'illicit' drugs), but there is still a well-functioning global market in 'illicit' drugs. Can anybody see a coherent argument for the state to then collect taxes on such transactions?

* In many or most countries. H in the comments informs us that since the Gambling Act 2005, gambling debts are enforceable in the UK.

Or, bearing in mind whose blog this is: how much would people be willing to pay each year to renew their entry at HM Land Registry? Because that is all you've got, the original contract to buy land off the previous owner is no more valid than his claim was, and you've no legal comeback on the previous owner if somebody burgles your house or trespasses in your garden, despite this is what you [thought you] were paying for.