Link (pdf): Greg Waymer, a patent attorney from Connecticut, won the World Series of Poker Championship this week. Waymer collected a $5 million prize for his efforts.

We’ll be able to watch Raymer and the rest of the field during July, August, and September on ESPN.

Nipper has started posted a humor article on Fridays. I love it. This morning, I found myself anxious to see today’s post.

Link: Patents may become a big issue for the upcoming elections in Europe. European software coders are apparently making the software patent directive an election issue. The transnational election for the European Parliament is in the fall.

Link: The Secretary General of Interpol, the international police network, stated that Interpol believes there is a significant link between couterfitting and funding of terrorism. The Secretary expressed suprise that no one has asked him what Interpol is doing to fight the problem.

“What I find absolutely amazing is that there is this multi-billion-dollar crime problem that affects the safety of people, the security of governments, that is connected to organised crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. And no one, no one pressures me as secretary-general of Interpol to say what I am doing to fight this problem. No one.”

“I want governments to care about the problem of intellectual property crime. I want governments to demand that law enforcement agencies account for how their resources are deployed to fight this problem.”

Interpol recently hosted the first Global Conference on Combatting Counterfitting with the World Customs Organization (WCO).

WCO has an extensive web site for the Conference.

The Interpol web site claims that counterfeitting accounts for more than seven per cent of global trade annually. That buys a lot of terrorism.

Link: The Japan Patent Office recently posted a table showing the number of applications and registrations in various categories over the last decade (patents, utility models, trademarks, etc). The number of patent applications has actually declined each of the last three years, going from a peak of 439,175 in 2001 to 413,092 in 2003.

Link: A proposed patent bill in the UK, designed to “update and modernise” the patent law, includes measures to help those trying to resolve patent disputes. The bill includes provisions that would allow the Patent Office to issue non-binding opinions on validity and infringement, apparently as a mechanism to avoid litigation.

Link: The text of the bill is available from the Parliament web site.

I noticed this marking on a product over the weekend. This has got to be the broadest possible patent marking you could place on a product.

Link: Lessig has an interesting post on the copyright law of Iraq

Jamie Knox sent along Iraq’s newly amended copyright law (as if THIS was where we needed to worry about rule of law in Iraq). I’ve just begun going through it, but there are favorite tidbits so far: collections of data can be protected; readings of the Koran are protected; and collections of government documents can be protected. But significantly, the term is life plus 50! More disharmony…

Link: In a speech highlighting technology trends for businesses, Bill Gates described the benefits of blogs and their potential as a business tool.

Link: The linked article is a good summary of the recent developments in the battle for software patents in the European Union. Mary Harney, the Irish Minister for Trade and Enterprise, has made patents a priority in Ireland, and apparently played a key role in getting agreement on the current draft directive. Ireland currently holds the Presidency of the EU.

The software patent directive still has to be put to a vote in the European Parliament.