There’s no need to make America great again.
America has been great since it became the first nation on Earth where a set of ideas became the ruling principles of governance.
America was great when it was established that authority did not come from divine right, or...

Back in 2014, we considered many possible ways of protecting net neutrality that would not rely on the FCC, including antitrust law. Unfortunately, U.S. antitrust law is not up to the challenge.
Antitrust law is an economic doctrine that gives little if any weight to freedom of expression and...

This week, the political heads of the intelligence services of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the "Five Eyes" alliance) met in Ottawa. The Australian delegation entered the meeting saying publicly that they intended to "thwart the encryption of terrorist messaging." The final communiqué...

The U.S. Copyright Office just released a long-awaited report about Section 1201, the law that bans circumventing digital restrictions on copyrighted works. Despite years of evidence that the social costs of the law far outweigh any benefits, the Copyright Office is mostly happy with the law as...

Senator Chris Coons introduced a bill this week called the STRONGER Patents Act [PDF]. The bill contains many terrible ideas. It would gut inter partes review (a valuable tool for challenging bad patents). It would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. Mercexchange (thereby allowing patent...

Michael Skelps was celebrating on New Year’s Eve with family and friends when he got a strange email from a lawyer. It said that Michael’s company, Capstone Photography, had just been sued for patent infringement. Michael went from celebrating to worrying about whether his small company would survive.
Capstone...

Ken Cooper runs a small business out of his home. Unfortunately Ken’s business was not so small that it avoided the notice of a patent troll.
Ken has been writing code since 1973. His life in programming has ranged from small personal projects to founding a software company that...

If you’ve ever seen a picture menu, you’ve seen the supposed ‘invention’ claimed by U.S. Patent 6,585,516. Although it had a complex-sounding title (“Method and system for computerized visual behavior analysis, training, and planning”), the patent simply claimed using picture menus on a computer. Patent troll DietGoal Innovations, LLC,...

Several US senators spoke out this week on the importance of net neutrality to innovation and free speech. They are right. The Internet has become our public square, our newspaper, our megaphone. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to turn it in something more akin to commercial cable...