The presence of one group at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests might be surprising: the Distributist Review has produced this flyer for distribution at the protests.  They don’t seem to have asked themselves whether G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc would have gone down to protest with the unwashed masses (the answer, of course, is never in a million years) but contemporary “neodistributists” are a more inclusive set. They go far beyond the metaphysical and aesthetic principles of Chesterton and Belloc’s economics. Since that flyer’s a little hard to read, we’ve put together a list to help you identify your inner distributist: herewith, Ten Signs You May Be a Distributist:

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Last week the Federal Circuit Court handed down what seemed to many a funny decision: that human genes are patentable. Myriad Genetics owns patents for two tumor suppressor genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2 (mutations of these genes are correlated with increased incidence of breast cancer, making them of great interest to doctors and scientists). Myriad was sued by doctors and researchers who claim that genes fall into the category of “products of nature,” which makes them unpatentable, but the court disagreed.

Read more on Genetic Patents: Moral Concerns…

News broke yesterday of an audacious violation of Apple Computer’s intellectual property rights (IPR) in China. This expat blogger posted photos of three sham Apple Stores she discovered in the city of Kunming—the stores have been set up by some entrepreneurial chap hoping to capitalize on the company’s Chinese popularity.

Read more on Why to Get Worked Up about Those Fake Apple Stores…

Back in September I posted an announcement about a new book that contributed in interesting ways to our understanding of patent/intellectual property issues. Now Julio Cole’s full review of the book in the Independent Review is available online. An excerpt:

Read more on Cole on “Patent Failure”…

As I’ve said before, some of the most interesting debates are those that break down along atypical lines: for example, by splitting dedicated limited government advocates rather than pitting them against statists. Back in 2001, the Journal of Markets & Morality conducted a controversy between two libertarian-leaning economists, Julio Cole and Paul Cleveland, concerning copyright and patent law.

Read more on Patent Manipulation…

A couple weeks ago the NYT magazine ran a piece by contributing writer Tina Rosenberg, which attempts to outline some of the ways in which “everyone in a wealthy nation has become the beneficiary of the generous subsidies that poorer countries bestow upon rich ones.”

Read more on ‘Reverse’ Subsidies…