Protecting Traditional Knowledge From Copyright

Corporations occasionally try to copyright traditional knowledge, culture, and/or technology.

India has taken the step of creating the traditional digital library which documents traditional knowledge.  This makes it more difficult for corporations to take traditional knowledge and claim that purely for themselves. 

Case in point: the recent case where Colgate Palmolive attempted to copyright a product that used traditional Indian spices - and apparently nothing else. Read about the case here, in which Colgate did not prevail.

Data Planet and dataZoa Make Big Data Easy

It's the age of big data.  And learning to make attractive graphs and charts for presentations as an important job skill.

But data planet and dataZoa make it easy for you.  These databases allow you to easily import data from several different sources and easily make charts and graphs.  True, there's a way to do this in Microsoft Excel but it is much easier in these two databases.

Data-Planet Statistical Datasets

dataZoa

MRI + Migration - Save Your Data

MRI/ University Reporter will change platforms on June 30 with no information carrying over from the old platform, and no redirects for the URL.  There’s a message on the database page to alert anyone who uses this regularly.   You need to export any saved data before June 30^th. 

MRI+ University Reporter from Mediamark Research Inc.  

Subjects:	Consumer demographics, psychographics/lifestyles, product & brand usage, and media preferences based on a national probability sample of 27,000 households. Although MRI provides marketing research for a wide variety of products, it does not analyze all consumer items. Please see the MRI Internet User Guide for help or watch our YouTube video.
Formats:	Full text.
Coverage:	2001 to last year.

Koch Support of Florida State University Economics Department

Presented for your information.  The Economics Department at Florida State University will apparently be largely funded by the Koch family.  This support will include strict oversight of publications and hires by the department by the Koch foundation. 

Please read the article for more information. 

John Nash and Game Theory

John Nash, a principal originator of game theory, and the subject of the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind was recently killed in an automobile accident.

John Nash titles here. Our copy of a Beautiful Mind here.

Among many contributions, Nash was famous for the Nash equilibrium in game theory. From the obituary in the Guardian:

“In his discipline, he gave his name to the Nash equilibrium – a position in a situation of competition or conflict in which both sides have selected a strategy, but where neither side can then independently change their strategy without ending up in a less desirable position.”

Search Patents In Lexis-Nexis

You can look up patents and trademarks in the LexisNexis database.

To look up all patents and trademarks held BY COMPANY in LexisNexis:

1) Click the SEARCH BY CONTENT TYPE then the COMPANIES tab, 2) look up your company in COMPANY DOSSIER and then 3) patents is on the left side of screen

You can also search patents in general in LexisNexis. Again, select By Content Type then Patents.


Or, you can use the US Patent Office website, but you can't search by company so well. They also have trademarks, BTW.

Here's what the advanced patent search in LexisNexis looks like.

Stan Freberg, Ad Pioneer

From the New York Times obituary:  

His subversive but oddly effective approach caused Advertising Age to call him the father of the funny commercial and one of the 20th century’s most influential admen. He won the Clio, a top industry award, 21 times, and had a diverse clientele, including General Motors, the United States Army and the Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Freberg’s tactics worked for the simple reason that he was funny, having honed his humor on some of history’s best-selling comedy records. Paul McCartney said in 1985 that the Beatles’ anarchic humor owed much to his influence.

Our Stan Freberg books.