Customer Reviews

Owning the Future: Staking Claims on the Knowledge Frontier

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What makes this book pleasurable to read is that Shulman is an excellent writer. He makes great arguments and backs them up with solid case studies and examples. What's more is that he accurate in his observations.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in intellectual property and patents. The current bizarre world of patents and intellectual property is on the verge of blowing up just like the dot com fiasco. Shulman explains why the patent system as it now exists cannot continue indefinitely. The patenting of body processes, ideas, and business practices is absurd to even the casual reader. Shulman's examples will amaze you.

Who will not like this book are those people bent on patenting everything from colors to the properties of indigenous peoples. They will see this book as exposing the fact that the emperor is naked and if they are in the business, they won't like what they read. There is no question that a new invention, like a new computer chip, should be patented, but Shulman explains how far the patenting system has strayed away from the way it should work. This book will not tell you how to file a patent. It will not even give you a very good overview of the patent process. It is not for inventers. What it will do is make you shake you head in disbelief at the sorry state of the patent system and develop an instant dislike of some of the industries abusing the system.

What amazed me after reading Shulman's book is that there is no Ralph Nader kind of activist speaking out about the patent industry. The atrocities and deaths resulting from corporate misuse of the patent system fare exceed the scope and depth of Nader's attack of the auto industry. There exists a leadership vacuum in patent activism. Perhaps Shulman's book will awaken the leader we need to protect us from corporate misuse of patents and the broken patent system.

Notice that the only poor review of this book comes from an IP lawyer. Considering Shulman's analysis, which often remarks that the biggest winners of current IP laws are the lawyers who pursue infringement cases, it is no surprise. I was impressed with _Owning the Future_ because it successfully covered a wide terrain of significant topics in IP with a brisk, economical journalistic style, so I can share this book with any number of people. While I disagree with the somewhat moderate approach Schulman takes toward intellectual property rights and patent law--I am much more in line with Richard Stallman's reasoning--I found this book very informative. For the low price it is being offered for on Amazon, it's definitely worth it.

Shulman brings this material to life. This is no academic tome. If you read one book about intellectual property this year--this one should be it!

With fights over the human genome intensifying and increasing numbers of press reports about legal battles over patents, this clear-headed book puts the complicated issues of the emerging knowledge economy in an accessible and thought-provoking context.

Shulman uses the overriding public-interest concerns involved to pull the disparate material together in a compelling and readable fashion. I was surprised and angered by the stories he recounts from the frontlines of the intellectual property frontier.I also found the book hard to put down.

Read about book in Atlantic Monthly article.Fit in well with class I'm taking on trade,TRIPS,and Intellectual Property in the MBA program at PSU.Very relevant to what's happening in a number of fields especially GM crops.

Shulman is brilliant and convincing.... There is a free for all going on right now and a lot of public domain intellectual property is being squandered by opportunistic greedy business concerns and their parasite attorneys. The public is asleep at the wheel. When will they wake up? They are so asleep and sheep-like that it is easy to see how one could fall in to exploiting the situation. Still doesn’t make it right though. I dream that some day we as supposedly educated people will develop some higher ethical standards then we have now but some of these peoples actions detailed in this book make me wonder.

This book totally changed my thinking about the new economy. It crackles with wide-ranging examples and clear-headed thinking. Everyone at the lab I work at has been talking about it and I think it will come to be considered a classic: Shulman zeroes in on the fundamental problems of creating a knowledge-based economy without strong, shared, civic protections on the knowledge we as a democracy need and want to share. Right now--right this minute--we need to begin to think about preserving our shared civic institutions--our libraries, museums, schools, universities, nonprofit hospitals and research centers. Shulman is brilliant and convincing in showing how their public-spirited missions have eroded and will surely erode further in the barrage of private intellectual property claims without our strenous intervention. Read this book. You will never think about intellectual property the same way again.

Shulman's "critique" of intellectual property is wrong on almost every point. The key point that Shulman misses (and in fact I can find no mention of in his book) is that the issuance of a patent gives a TEMPORARY monopoly. From Shulman's exposition, one would think that the patenting process gives some kind of permanent hold on some idea. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Issuance of a patent REQUIRES that the full details of the invention be published, and at the end of the term of the patent (now 17 years), the rights to said idea enter the public domain. Increased restrictions on patenting will, in fact, take us back to the old days of trade secrets, notebooks written in code, and will actually IMPEDE the advance of technology. Shulman's book typical socialist/progressive thought experiment--long on idealistic wishes, short on function in the real world

Shulman's book is worthless. This guy is a sensationlist hypocrite out to make a buck - if you don't believe me reconcile this quote: "Any schemes that foster the commercialization of intellectual property at the expense of free sharing of information and ideas will ultimately fail..." with the fact that I had to fork out $25 for Mr. Shulman's book and the copyright notice was prominently displayed on the first page!

Among many other failures Shulman totally ignores the underlying quid pro quo of the patent system - a limited monoploy in turn for complete disclosure of inventions.

The topic has been studied to death and it is always the case that extending patent protection into a new technological area results in increasesd innovation and more public discourse on ideas.

I would have given it 0 stars if allowed.

I am an IP attorney by trade but I can appreciate thoughful critiques of the current IP system. This was not one. Read Lawrence Lessig's or James Boyle's books (Code... and Shamans, Software and Spleens) if you want some light rather than heat accompanying a critique of current IP systems.

This one was a waste of trees!