Self-published authors to get in iBookstore via Smashwords

Apple initially named five of the top six major publishers as launch partners for its iBookstore for the iPad. More recently, we heard that two independent publishers had signed deals to provide e-books and that Apple plans to offer free public domain titles from Project Gutenberg. Now, self-published authors will also get a crack at the iBookstore via deals Apple has struck with e-book publishing services Smashwords and Lulu.

Smashwords and Lulu are for e-books what TuneCore is for music. TuneCore will take your CD (or indie film) and upload it to the iTunes Store for a flat fee, eliminating the need to jump through all the hoops necessary to set up an account directly with Apple. All the royalties earned on sales of the album and individual tracks are then forwarded to the artist.

Smashwords works a little differently; instead of an up-front free, it takes a small percentage of the royalties that various e-book stores offer. However, authors merely need to upload a specially formatted Word document with the text of their book, along with an image of the cover. Smashwords uses tools that automatically convert the Word file into the formats specified for online e-book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon Kindle, and Lexcycle Stanza, and uploads books to the stores that an author requests.

Details of a deal to add the iBookstore as a publishing option leaked after an e-mail to current Smashwords clients was widely published online. Though he couldn't comment on specific details, founder Mark Coker told Ars that he could confirm that Smashwords does have a deal in place with Apple.

The e-mail was sent to current Smashwords authors to make sure their books were ready in time to be on the iBookstore at this weekend's April 3 launch. It also explained that books destined for the iBookstore have a few extra requirements, which Smashbooks will make standard for future submissions. All cover images need to be at least 600px tall, titles must have a unique ISBN number (separate from the print version if one exists), and books must have a price that ends in ".99" (i.e. $4.99 versus $4.95).

Apple also requires that pricing for e-book versions should be less than a print version if one is available, and there are limits to the maximum iBookstore price for the first 12 months after release depending on the price of the print edition. Currently there is no option to sell books on the iBookstore without FairPlay DRM, and Apple didn't respond to our request for comment on the matter.

Smashwords gives authors and publishers 60 percent of the retail price of an e-book as a royalty, with Apple keeping the usual 30 percent and Smashwords keeping a 10 percent cut for its services. "Our general policy for the last two years at Smashwords has been to return 85 percent of the net to our authors and publishers," Coker told Ars. Even with Smashwords keeping a small percentage, though, that's a far better deal than the 35 percent authors are getting publishing directly on the Kindle.

It also appears that book publishing service Lulu will also begin to distribute books via the iBookstore shortly. Lulu will convert titles to ePub format automatically and upload them to the iBookstore unless authors specifically request that it doesn't. Further details about pricing and availability aren't known since no public announcement has been made, but would likely be similar to those offered by Smashwords.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Appeals court strikes down another generic biotech patent

Last week, the full US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit upheld an earlier ruling by a partial panel, invalidating a biotech patent that originated in research at MIT and Harvard. The patent covered any of three ways to disable a signaling pathway involved in the immune response, and would have enabled its licensee, Ariad Pharmaceuticals, to go after companies that already have drugs on the market. The court held, however, that simply specifying different ways of interfering with a protein without any written description of how to do so constituted insufficient grounds for granting a patent.

This case, and a similar one (University of Rochester v. Pharmacia) that served as precedent, both followed a similar pattern. In each case, basic research in a university context identified a key protein involved in inflammatory responses. For Rochester, it was they enzyme Cox-2; drugs that inhibit it included Celebrex and Vioxx, both painkillers with lower risk of stomach irritation than aspirin. In the new case, it was the NF-kappaB signaling pathway, which is involved in the immune response to pathogens. Excessive activation of the NF-κB creates chronic inflammation. In this case, Eli Lilly had two drugs already on the market.

In each case, the patent that was granted contained a generic description of how to inhibit the protein involved. For the Ariad patent, three methods were mentioned: blocking the signaling pathways that activate NF-κB, reducing the protein's activity, and preventing the protein from binding DNA. Neither patent specified the actual biochemical mechanism for performing any of these inhibitory functions, nor did they describe any substances that could actually do so. In short, they covered any possible method of targeting a specific biochemical pathway.

As soon as the patents were granted, the grantees turned around and sued the pharmaceutical companies that had actually done the hard work of finding an implementation of these generic concepts.

The first suit, which was decided in 2003, didn't go well for the patent holders, as a judge ruled that the patent, as granted, didn't include a sufficient description of an actual invention. The new case resulted in a jury trial, which Lilly lost, leading its lawyers to request that the verdict be vacated as a matter of law. The presiding judge declined, leading to the appeals process. An initial ruling by a three-judge panel overturned the Ariad patent on the grounds of an insufficient written description, but the full court decided that the issue was significant enough to merit consideration.

The relevant passage of the US patent code was quoted in full in the decision:

The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.

To a certain extent, the argument is over where to put the commas in the statute, which determines what, precisely, needs to appear in the written description. Based on its reading, the Court has determined that "nothing in the statute’s language or grammar that unambiguously dictates that the adequacy of the 'written description of the invention' must be determined solely by whether that description identifies the invention so as to enable one of skill in the art to make and use it." So, even though a skilled biochemist could view the rough descriptions in the patent and know how to develop an inhibitor, that alone is not enough to mean that the patent is valid.

With that interpretation of the law stated, the court focused on whether the patent defined anything that could reasonably be described as an invention. "Every patent must describe an invention," the decision states. "It is part of the quid pro quo of a patent; one describes an invention, and, if the law’s other requirements are met, one obtains a patent."

Its conclusion is that this sort of description is nowhere to be found. Using biological terminology, the Court concluded that the patent describes what it terms a "genus" of inventions, but neglects to specify any "species"—meaning actual chemicals—that are sufficient to show that the patent holder can actually claim to have implemented the genus. Instead, using language from an earlier decision, it dismisses this approach as "no more than a 'wish' or a 'plan'." Just as the court decided in the Rochester case, without a description of an actual chemical that performs these functions, a patent cannot be considered to have provided an adequate written description.

Although it simply reaffirms the Rochester decision, the new opinion attempts to explicitly set a standard for written descriptions that apply generally. And the standard it sets is a rather significant one. Based on the last several decades of biochemistry and molecular biology, it's really easy to identify proteins that help regulate a variety of essential processes, and suggest a variety of routes to inhibiting them. Actually developing something that does so successfully is where the hard work and creativity—the inventiveness, as it were—comes in. In short, this interpretation of the statute appears to bring patent law more in line with the general intent of the patent system.

The decision is also a good sign that the Appeals Court (or at least its clerks) have come to grips with modern biology. The decision includes a decent description of the NF-κB signaling process, and casually discusses testimony regarding whether the protein has a transcription activation domain that's distinct from its DNA binding domain. It's not a stretch to expect that a court that finds the biology mysterious will be more likely to grant deference to technically complex but flawed patents, to the detriment of both research and society. The fact that the court is comfortable discussing biochemistry suggests that this risk is receding.

Source: Arstechnica.com

iBookstore won't mean the disappearance of $9.99 e-books

Publishers happily signed on to distribute e-books for the iPad via Apple's iBookstore, in part because it allowed more flexibility in pricing books above Amazon's $9.99 ceiling on new and bestselling titles. Though prices are expected to be in the range of $12.99 to $14.99 for new titles in hardcover, that won't mean titles as low as $9.99 will disappear.

According to anonymous sources speaking to the New York Times, the agreements with publishers include provisions to discount book prices on bestsellers, similar to the practice used in brick and mortar stores such as Borders. Furthermore, prices for e-book editions of titles that retail below the typical $26 price for a hardcover would be sold below $14.99 as well.

We likely won't know more details until the iPad ships and the iBookstore is open for business, but it seems like the agreements between publishers and Apple offer something for both groups. Publishers get more flexibility in pricing, and Apple gets to offer some titles at comparably discounted prices.

Source: Arstechnica.com