Peter Zura, in the 271 Patent Blog, notes, in Supreme Court Prepares to Chop Down “Clear and Convincing” Standard for Proving Patent Invalidity, that the Court has agreed to hear the appeal of the Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd., case. In this case, i4i sued Microsoft for patent infringement and was awarded a $290M judgment, based on Microsoft’s use of XML in Word.

In the midst of a global recession, Sweden has recorded a 6.9% year-on-year increase in GDP last quarter, and unemployment is falling. Unusual facts: the central bank has been raising rates and the government has been cutting taxes for all groups including the very rich.

Thanks to Henry Manne for passing along this fascinating analysis by Gerard N. Magliocca of the Roosevelt Administration’s attempt to outlaw private payments in gold.

This Article presents a case study of how constitutional actors respond when the rule of law and necessity are sharply at odds.

A woman in Spain has been declared the rightful owner of the sun and she plans to charge the rest of the world for “using” it; i.e., for in any way taking advantage of the heat or light emanating from it. This may sound ridiculous and somewhat humorous, but it is true.

I’m sure that Mr.Mohamud is a bad guy but a few paragraphs in this New York Times story add strange complications to the story, among which:

My C4SIF post The Perils of Centralized Innovation concerned a fascinating excerpt from The Master Switch by Tim Wu (excerpts on scribd and