In the News

Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your rights

So sang Bob Marley and the Wailers in the 1973 anthem urging their followers to fight for political and economic independence. It now appears that the family of the late reggae master is taking his exhortations to heart in what is heating up as a bitter three-way licensing dispute over the use of Marley's music in ring tones.

At the heart of the struggle is an agreement between Universal Music, which owns the rights to much of Marley's music, and Verizon Wireless, the U.S. cellphone carrier, which apparently gave Verizon exclusive rights to market ring tone versions of many of Marley's best-known songs.

Marley's family (the singer died in 1981) cried foul, saying that the deal implied a Marley endorsement of Verizon's service, and that such a deal required the family's approval. Chris Blackwell, the longtime family spokesman whose Island Records helped popularize Marley and other reggae stars in the 1970s, threatened legal action against Universal and Verizon. Verizon removed the songs from its site to allow time to work out an agreement; Blackwell said the family would abandon plans to sue, but still criticized both Universal and Verizon for "refusing to give the musicians the respect they deserve."

That was too much for Verizon, which promptly put the songs back up on its site. Blackwell countered with renewed threats to sue; Universal, in an apparently conciliatory move, then announced that other phone carriers would be able to market the tones.

How the conflict is resolved remains to be seen; but it has highlighted the enduring appeal of Marley and the often incendiary music he created during his career, cut short when he died of cancer at the age of 36: in less than two weeks on the Verizon site, Marley's songs were downloaded more than 30,000 times.

100 Patents and Counting

Bob Loce, an imaging scientist at the Xerox Corporation, received his 100th U.S. utility patent on June 5 and his 101st on June 21. He has another 40 in the pipeline, and he has not yet turned 50. To spark original or "wacky" ideas, Loce keeps objects like an array lens made with glass bubbles, interesting looking rocks, very large lenses and holograms in his bottom drawer to pull out and...