In the new Net world, it's not who owns information who wins. Media companies have to adapt. If they don't, that's not my problem.'' Pretty brutal position. Now, consider the one Scott Wills is in.
Intellectual property is the Web's war zone.
From music files to patented online coupon schemes, hardly a day goes by without a skirmish. Since 1995, federal lawsuits over patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property have risen 10 times faster than other cases brought under federal law, topping 8,200 cases last year. It's just a giant mess,'' says Jake Winebaum, founder of the Santa Monica-based Web incubator eCompanies. Napster, a maker of music-sharing software, is also seeing its very existence threatened by lawsuits from the music industry and individual recording artists. That has many experts worrying that intellectual property battles are compromising the innovation at the heart of the New Economy.