Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

One of the more interesting developments in cyberspace is the Harvard Law Lab, co-directed by John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough. The aim of the Law Lab is to be similar to the MIT Media Lab in fostering explorations at the intersection of law and technology.  The modus of the Lab is to foster collaborative projects among people of diverse expertise, including other academic institutions and businesses.  Discussion is already going on with faculty and fellows at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Medical School (brain science) and Harvard Business School.  The Lab is funded by a large grant from the Kauffman Foundation, a leading foundation that supports entrepreneurship and business.

Students, inventors, innovators of all kinds learn by studying how previous innovations were done.  What the patent system does is assure that this information–how things work–is “open sourced” for all to learn from. In order to get a patent you must disclose how your idea works “so that someone skilled in the ordinary art” of your field can duplicate it.  That is, you have to give up your trade secrets.  This requirement, by the way, is why many companies do not file software patents–they don’t want to share their ideas.

When a software patent application is filed, 18 months later it is made public. Typically this is 2 years before the application will even be considered by a patent examiner.  This means that ideas are in the public sphere, the commons, for all to learn from well before any property rights have even begun to be considered for the inventor.

Most patents are rejected by the patent office.  Months ensue, and typically if any patent is attained it is for a much narrower scope than originally asked for by the inventor.  Meanwhile the key ideas have now been in the public domain for typically about 5 years–all the time fueling innovation.

Patents drive innovation because they spur inventors to try to work around and improve existing technology.  Unpatented ideas often become the basis for popularization only because they are free, and thus stifle innovation.

Consider an analogous case from another field: Why do you think the King James Bible is the most published?  Is it the most current or accurate or scholarly?  No.  Hardly.  The King James is long out of copyright. Publishers make high profits from publishing and promoting it.

Why is Apache the widest used web server?  Is it the best possible web server? No.  Hardly. It is the cheapest.

Same with Linux.  What is Linux, but a clone of Unix.  A commodity. Why is it popular? Because it is best? No. Because it is cheapest.

Have Apache and Linux spurred innnovation in operating systems? No, they have dampened innovation by making it nearly impossible for any company to make money in operating systems, and thus afford R&D investment.  Sun was the company innovating in the Unix tradition. What has happened to Sun?  It has been wiped out by Linux-based competitors, and become a notably unsuccessful and non-innovative open source company.  When is the last time you looked to Sun for leading edge innovation?  In the late 80s, before the commoditization of Unix/Linux.

Ironically, the best spur to innovation in operating systems is Microsoft Windows. Why?  Because customers are willing to pay to use it, and thus prospective competitors know they might be able to sell an innovative contender.  Who has taken advantage of the Microsoft Windows opportunity?  Apple, by investing R&D in a highly innovative advanced version of the Unix/Mach lineage, building on user interface ideas from Xerox PARC innovation.  Who has the best operating system for small computers?  Apple.

Thomas Jefferson invented the American patent system as a way to provide incentives to inventors to open up their trade secrets.  The quid pro quo was that inventors who would share their ideas got a limited-time property right to their inventions.  This has worked brilliantly in the US for 200 years.

Don’t believe the anti-patent PR. Note what companies are behind it:  IBM, with control of 45,000 patents, including 37000 directly owned in its name, and 3000 patents filed newly each year.  And Intel, whose CFO coined the term “patent troll.”  The celebrity lawyers who argue against patents, such as Larry Lessig, work for centers funded by IBM and other large patent holders.  These lawyers are not, notably technologists.  By contrast, look to real, pioneering technologists, such as Bill Joy or Danny Hillis. They are, wisely I think, supporters of patents.  Hmmm.  Think about it.

What is Cloudlaw?

Cloud computing + law = Cloudlaw.  

How many bars of law do you have right now?  Five bars? Check your cell phone.

———————————–

I am going to use this page and this post to develop and share my  thinking about Cloudlaw.

Cloudlaw as a concept emerged out of discussions among me, John Clippinger (author of Crowd of One) and Oliver Goodenough (co-author of Law and the Brain) of the Harvard Law Lab, starting in December of 2008.  I coined the term, but only as a generalization of and catch phrase for a deep body of insights being nurtured in a milieu that included not only John and Oliver but David Johnson (of NYU Law School) and Peter Early, a practicing business lawyer in Vermont.  The inspiration for the concept grows out of the virtual corporation work started last year in Vermont and resulting in the passage of a number of important state laws enabling the formation of fully virtual companies incorporate in Vermont.

Today deeply engaged in the Cloudlaw project prototype website.  Meeting with Oliver in a few moments.  Working on technology strategy for iCard support, for secure conversations, other technical issues required for our work with the State of Vermont on the formation of digital companies.  Are these nuts and bolts part of the emergence of “cloud business law”

Initially the vision of the Vermont project is to support entrepreneurs.  The Kauffman Foundation is funding the project. Cloudlaw is dedicated to providing the benefits of effective, efficient law to people no matter who they are and where they live.  

1. Forming a corporation, making a contract, starting a company is difficult in many countries
2. In many cases, what is missing is “rule of law” that permits small businesses to be easily created, and to thrive
3. Just as cloud computing benefits people no matter where they live, so cloud law can do the same
4. We are working with the State of Vermont to register new forms of corporations that exist primarily online, but can conduct activities anywhere
5. Today, web services come with your cell phone, anywhere you are. Soon we can ask: How many bars of law do you have? Let’s make a company!

Who else can benefit from services provided by Cloudlaw?

A vast array of services are available to citizens through mobile phones and provided “in the cloud” managed invisibly and seamlessly on their behalf.  Moreover, cloud computing makes possible linking together individuals into social networks and enables new forms of communities and organizations.

As someone who is active in the protection of human rights, I wonder what we might invent under the rubric of “cloud human rights law”.  Can cloudlaw serve the people of Sudan and Darfur? What would be the steps to doing so?  What can we learn from the notion of cloud services that would help us make better interventions to protect and nurture people in terrible situations at the fringe of world society?

How might we creatively think about this problem?  People depend upon the protection of the law at all times.  Human rights, freedom to think, worship, dream and hope are enabled by a rich fabric of laws, well-designed legal systems with educated and wise leaders, and a sense of respect and trust among citizens.  We take for granted the system when it works, which is an indication of how fundamentally important it is.  When it breaks down however we sense its absense acutely.

When effective, the law can be an embodiment of love, care and protection.  Lawyers sometimes speak of “the light of the law” as a kind of invisible force field within which people confidently form relationships among each other.  It is an invisible networks of ideas, rules and practices that reinforce our native sense of fairness and reciprocity and trust and security.

It is interesting to consider:  What are the ideas that we might want to use cloud services to spread, and around which we might create cloud communities?  What rules and practices do we want to establish, both online and offline, so that our cloud activities themselves are consistent with our values and vision?  How do we get a start?  How do we determine what cloud services might be helpful at the far end of our network, in the sands of Darfur?  What cloud service access devices and methods will work?  What cultural and social and professional patterns will we become involved in?

Some interesting work along these lines is Gillian Hadfield’s on “Law for a Flat World”. 

I like to think of what is needed in terms of the love that parents feel for children.  The love and care we feel for our children can and must extend to all persons and all creatures of our planet. Cloudlaw might help.

I used Intelligent Teams to put up a little intro site, with the live Hulu feed, twitter searches, CNN and so forth, at obamalive.com

Fred Wilson led off yesterday with a terrific post on how to deal with the American auto industry–break it up into pieces, and see which parts are viable.  Fix Volt, not “the industry.”

Fred’s prescription is exactly what the economics of innovation would tell us:  In a collapsing business ecosystem, the whole is not worth more than the sum of the parts.  The whole is worthless.  The sum of the parts is worthless.  SOME of the parts may be worth SOMETHING.  The way to determine if a part is worth something is to see if someone sees enough value to be willing to buy it.  Maybe Donald Trump wants the GM building in Detroit.  Or not.  Maybe Toyota wants volt–or not.  See enthusiastic support on Twitter here.

What is powerful about this solution is that it makes the breaking up and reconnecting of the ecosystem tractable.  And the pieces are selected for their value to a future that actual entrepreneurial leaders believe in enough to fund THEMSELVES and to try to accomplish through their own efforts.

The nation still has the problem of how to stabilize Detroit.  The collapse of GM, Ford and Chrysler will be an economic Katrina for people in the city.  On the other hand, perhaps better to rebuild Detroit directly.  1.  Encourage new, viable future-focused transportation companies (see Fred’s suggestion above and below).  2.  Encourage suppliers who can survive to grow within the new economic ecosystem that will be led by the new lead companies.  3.  Negotiate mortgage payment holidays to keep people in homes and to stabilize neighborhoods.  This is philosophically similar to how student loans do not have to be paid down while students are still in school.  Detroit will be in school. 4.  Tap into the strike funds, layoff funds, and possibly the pension funds of the unions to provide pay for workers.  Insist on a kind of “workfare” and have folks work on infrastructure, policing, schools and education.

Now that I think about it, an economic Katrina has ALREADY happened to Detroit–a slow, multi-year Katrina.  No bailout can change this fact.  Indeed, just as an actual bucket-brigade  “bailout” of the water in New Orleans would have been obviously futile, so a financial bailout of the auto makers is futile.  What we face is a rebuild. Let’s rebuild something worthwhile, something that is part of a future we can embrace and be proud of.

Here below is Fred’s terrifically clear suggestion. Click the link to read the whole thing:

Bust-Up, Not Bailout - Seeking Alpha
‘Bust-up, not bailout’ should be our rallying cry. Once upon a time busting up big companies was a populist movement. It’s time for that movement to rise up again. Not so much to rid our society of monopolies, but to rid our society of financial minefields that are ‘too big to fail’. I read a quote on twitter yesterday that said ‘too big to fail means too big to exist’.

And yet the government’s answer to our problems is to push for more consolidation. It’s nutty. Scale and complexity are the enemy of innovation and what ails most of the large businesses in this country, auto in particular, is a structural lack of innovation in the industry architecture.

It takes something like five years to get a new car designed and built in most large auto companies. That’s too long. I realize that designing and building a new car platform is not like hacking up a new web app. But five years? C’mon We have to do better than that.

And we need to completely neuter the auto industry’s ability to lobby our government to stop important initiatives like clean/alt energy and mass transit. It’s borderline criminal what the auto industry’s political efforts have done to our global competitive position right now.

The same is true of the financial services business, the airline business, electric utilities, and a host of other industries.

I am sympathetic to the argument that we cannot allow the entire supply chain of the auto industry to fail and I am certainly aware of how many plants will close and jobs will be lost if we let General Motors GM, Chrysler, and Ford F fail. It’s a tough call and Obama has already staked out a pro bailout auto position.

So I hope someone from his incoming team reads this and the conversations on this topic that went on via twitter yesterday. If we give taxpayer money to the auto business, it should be to finance a wholesale bust-up of the business. One PE firm should buy Volt. Another should buy Buick. A third should buy Jeep. A fourth should buy Lincoln. And if a brand can’t find a buyer at any price with a boatload of taxpayer money behind it, then it should fail.

CapeCodTimes.com - Kennedy wins voters’ hearts
HYANNIS — A cheerful crowd of voters and poll watchers greeted Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., yesterday as he and his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, headed toward the voting booths inside Barnstable Town Hall.

Kennedy said he hoped there would be a big turnout for yesterday’s state primary races.

“I get lumped up every time I see him,” said Shirley Clark of Hyannis, leaning on her cane as she watched Kennedy and his wife step into the elevator she had just exited.

Kennedy smiled at her, touched her arm and said, “I like your sticker,” with a nod of acknowledgment for the “I voted” sticker affixed to the front of her sweater.

“He’s such a great guy. He always says hello, always makes you feel like someone special,” Clark said as the elevator doors closed.

Kennedy entered through a basement door used by voters familiar with town hall.

On the second floor, where voters from precincts 9 and 13 cast their ballots, there was a veritable receiving line of area residents, most of whom smiled broadly when they saw Kennedy and his wife come into the room set aside for voting.

Like any other voters, the Kennedys leaned toward poll clerks seated behind a table and announced their names. The clerks in turn checked the names against the list of registered voters.

Kennedy shook hands, thanked people for their support and, once or twice, ran a hand through his trademark thick white hair.

Visible through that hair on the back of his head was a small scar from the surgery he underwent over the summer when doctors removed a brain tumor.

Kennedy has been recuperating on the Cape and sailing just about every day.

Stay away from polycarbonate water bottles, folks.  What some people have long suspected is strongly supported by this study–a chemical that leaches out of polycarbonates is very toxic. Even worse, the diseases that the chemical is linked to are heart disease and diabetes.

Common plastics chemical linked to human diseases | U.S. | Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.

Until now, environmental and consumer activists who have questioned the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA, have relied on studies showing harm from exposure in laboratory animals.

But British researchers, who published their findings on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed urine and blood samples from 1,455 U.S. adults aged 18 to 74 who were representative of the general population.

Using government health data, they found that the 25 percent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and, or diabetes compared to the 25 percent of with the lowest levels.

Talk about a development with implications for the role of innovators in the world.  Here is an accessible article on the DIY biology moment, complete with names of the corresponding academic journals.  You can do it.  Happy exploring:

Hackers aim to make biology household practice - The Boston Globe
CAMBRIDGE - In a third-floor loft where programmers build Internet start-ups, Mackenzie Cowell is talking about the tools he and like-minded young colleagues are using to fuel what they hope will be the next big thing in biology. The list includes a cut-up Charlie Card, ingredients bought on eBay to make a kind of scientific Jell-O, and a refrigerator, just scored on Craigslist.com, that chills to 80 degrees below zero.

Cowell is part of an effort called DIYbio - short for do-it-yourself biology - that aims to move science into the hands of hobbyists. It is starting by holding sessions where amateurs extract DNA, and attempt genetic fingerprinting using common household items and the kitchen sink.

“It shows you how much science can be about duct tape and having a few screws in the right place,” Cowell said. “It shatters that clinical image.”

What Cowell and crew hope to achieve is a democratization of science that could propel the field of biology into the mainstream, much as computer hackers fueled computer development a generation ago. After all, Silicon Valley’s Homebrew Computer Club played a part in the personal computer industry and counts Apple Inc. founders among its attendees; Cowell would like DIYbio to be the Homebrew Club of Biology.

Check this out, by way of Samantha Warren wonderful on design, type.  I can’t figure out how to show the example image–must see.

A Brief History of Avant Garde « Thinking for a Living™
Given the high volume of requests for the font, Lubalin formed Lubalin, Burns & Co. (which later became the International Typeface Corporation) and released ITC Avant Garde in 1970. Unfortunately, Lubalin quickly realized that Avant Garde was widely misunderstood and misused in poorly thought-out solutions, eventually becoming a stereotypical 1970s font due to overuse.

Tony DiSpigna, one of Lubalin’s partners and co-creator of ITC Lubalin Graph and ITC Serif Gothic, has been quoted as saying, “The first time Avant Garde was used was one of the few times it was used correctly. It’s become the most abused typeface in the world.” Ed Benguiat, one of type’s legends and a friend of Lubalin’s, commented, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde. Everybody ruins it. They lean the letters the wrong way.” Steven Heller also noted that the “excessive number of ligatures […] were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,” further commenting that “Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”

The strength of the Avant Garde font is certainly in its all-cap ligatures and it should be used as it was originally intended – a display face whose ligatures can be carefully crafted into magnificent letterform combinations. There were two original designs of ITC Avant Garde Gothic: one for setting headlines and one for text copy. The display design contained ligatures and alternate characters and the text design did not. Unfortunately, when Avant Garde Gothic was turned into a digital font, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included leaving designers with the least interesting aspect of the font.

A welcome dose of Meg Fowler–here’s a taste but you want to go there…

megfowler.com » About Meg
I might try to: write a novel; go kiteboarding; live in Prague, study for my Masters in Journalism; get hitched to a decent human being; and stop doing that weird thing with my toes. Or not. Anything is possible (though I don’t see my toes changing anytime soon.)

I’m better at laughing than crying. Logical, abstract, measured, and messy, all at once.

I probably like hockey more than you do.

I love my mom and dad.

This blog isn’t about anything; it just is.

As soon as it manages to be about something, I’ll let you know.