USPTO Not At All Happy About Justice Department Saying Genes Shouldn't Be Patentable

from the internal-rift dept

Last week, the Justice Department surprised a ton of people by filing an amicus brief saying that isolated genes should not be patentable. The NY Times has an article quoting a bunch of outraged patent attorneys, who are worried about their own jobs more than anything else, but also has some tidbits suggesting that the Patent and Trademark Office is not at all happy either, despite the fact that they're both part of the same administration. We noted in our original post that there must have been quite the political battle, and as will often happen, the losers appear to be griping. The USPTO has said that, even though the very same administration it's a part of says isolated genes shouldn't be patentable, it will continue to grant such patents until a court tells them not to (which, er, is what the district court did). The article also quotes a lawyer who spoke with USPTO director David Kappos, and noted that Kappos "seemed chagrined" at the situation. That seems like a polite way of saying that the USPTO is pissed off.

Filed Under: gene patents, patents, politics
Companies: justice department, uspto

Once Again, The Justice Department Fails To Tell Congress About Its Wiretapping Activities, As Required By Law

from the who-watches-this-stuff dept

The Justice Department sure doesn't like oversight -- even when it's required by law. Julian Sanchez points us to the disturbing news that, despite being required by law to report to Congress each year on "the number of pen register orders and orders for trap and trace devices applied for by law enforcement agencies of the Department of Justice," it appears that for many years the Attorney General has delivered no such report. This has happened before as well. In 2004, the Justice Department dumped five years worth of reports on Congress, and it appears it did so again in 2009. Meaning that Congress did not get the interim annual reports. That would mean that for five year periods, Congress -- who is supposed to be overseeing such surveillance activity -- has not been doing its job, effectively allowing the Justice Department to do what it wants with such surveillance efforts. And, remember, this is a Justice Department that has already been found to have massively abused surveillance activity beyond what the law allows. Doesn't that make you feel safer?

Filed Under: abuse, oversight, wiretapping
Companies: congress, justice department

Justice Department Asking Questions About Apple Trying To Block Labels From Offering Deals To Amazon

from the restraint-of-trade... dept

Back in March, we wrote about reports that Apple had gone around and pressured various record labels to stop working with Amazon on its "MP3 Daily Deal" promotion. The reports suggested that Apple had told the labels that it would not promote any releases that were featured as Amazon's Daily Deal. As we noted at the time, this sounded like a classic "restraint of trade" situation that the government tends to frown upon, especially when performed by what might be considered the dominant player in the market. I'm not sure I believe it should be an antitrust issue, but it certainly is the kind of thing that the government gets upset about.

So it should come as little surprise at all to find out, indeed, that the Justice Department is now looking into this. Of course, it's early, and nothing may come of it, but you would still think that Apple would be a bit more careful than blatantly telling partners not to work with a competitor. Or does Steve Jobs hope that his powers of persuasion will wow over the Feds as well?

Filed Under: antitrust, music, promotions
Companies: amazon, apple, justice department

DOJ Was Three Hours From Suing Google For Antitrust Violations

from the pick-your-fights dept

It was pretty clear back in September, when the Justice Department hired well-known antitrust litigator Sandy Litvack, that it had decided that it was going to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, even if there were serious questions about what harm its ad deal with Yahoo would actually cause. Despite plenty of negotiation and totally rewriting the deal, the Justice Department was set on opposing it, leading Google to give up.

Now, that litigator, Sandy Litvack has admitted that the Justice Department was three hours away from filing its antitrust suit, which he was "looking forward to" and he's apparently disappointed he didn't get to go to court over it. That seems troublesome. If the purpose of antitrust activity is to protect consumers, then its litigators should be pretty happy that it avoided a (taxpayer-funded) legal battle.

Filed Under: antitrust, justice department
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Yahoo And Google Revise Deal To Try To Win Antitrust Approval

from the bargaining dept

With Yahoo and Google in the midst of a vast negotiation with the Justice Department to try to avoid an antitrust lawsuit over their proposed ad deal -- even to the point of Google threatening to back out entirely -- it shouldn't come as a surprise that they're going to propose various modifications to the deal.

The news today is leaking that the two companies are proposing a greatly scaled back version of the deal to see if it passes Justice Department muster. In this case, the deal would be shortened from 10 years to just two, and would limit how much revenue it could represent to Yahoo while also allowing any advertiser to opt out of the deal. We're still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let's ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn't do something soon that may be what we're looking at.

Filed Under: antitrust
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Google And Yahoo May End Deal; Not Worth An Antitrust Lawsuit

from the ouch-for-yahoo dept

With various politicians pushing the Justice Department to slam Google on antitrust charges (it's worth noting, of course, that Rep. Joe Barton, who seems to be leading the anti-Google charge, just so happens to have received an awful lot of campaign money from AT&T -- Google's arch nemesis), it appears that Google and Yahoo's attempt to broker a deal with the Justice Department may be falling through.

Reports are coming out that the two companies are ready to announce that they're walking away from their planned deal. This actually represents a bad end result for almost everyone involved. Yahoo will be hurt the most by this, and the last thing Yahoo needs right now is more trouble. For Google it's a loss, but not a huge loss. Microsoft comes out of it happy (and will gleefully watch Yahoo's stock continue to slide). It's still unclear what actual harm it would do to the marketplace to have Google running ads on Yahoo, but since when is politics about reason?

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, deals
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo