Eminent Domain for Intellectual Property?

So, I've now seen two weird cases in the news that seem like patents are infringing on the public good.

Voting machines:

A Sequoia executive, Edwin Smith, put Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi on notice that an independent analysis would violate the licensing agreement between his firm and the county. In a terse two-page letter Smith also argued the voting machine software is a Sequoia trade secret and cannot be handed over to any third party.

Stray satellite:

In the face of unrelated legal battles between the current patent owner Boeing and the satellite's owner SES Americom - any efforts to salvage AMC-14 have been cast aside.

Primarily this is because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - and Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.

Doesn't this seem wrong? Isn't intellectual property subject to eminent domain? SCOTUS said so back in 1912. Voting transparency is fundamental to our society, so I feel eminent domain definitely applies in the first case. It's a tougher argument for a privately owned satellite, but space research has been said to be good for advancement of mankind before, so maybe it applies. More likely to apply is a principle in tort law where if one party has a minor inconvenience in order to solve the entire dispute, they are made to swallow it. I feel $50 mil is a minor inconvenience compared to a likely multi-billion dollar satellite. Then again, I don't know for sure.

Slot Machines vs. Voting Machines

Tables are usually good for getting a point across. A greater point that this illustrates is that it is not the concept of e-voting that is the problem, merely the implementation - the lack of any oversight or security. Like everything else in society, moving towards computers in inevitable, really - we just have to work on making it incorruptible.

Duties of a Citizen

This is a problem that I'm sure we've all known about for some time.

I make it clear to my students that it is not only their right but their duty to arrive at their own conclusions. They are free to defend rendition, waterboarding, or any other aspect of America's post-9/11 armamentarium. But I challenge their right to tune out the world, and I question any system or society that can produce such students and call them educated. I am concerned for the nation when a cohort of students so talented and bright is oblivious to all such matters. If they are failing us, it is because we have failed them.

...

As a nation, we spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about illegal immigration and painfully little on what it means to be a citizen, beyond the legal status conferred by accident of birth or public processing. We are too busy building a wall around us to notice that we are shutting ourselves in. Intent on exporting democracy — spending blood and billions in pursuit of it abroad — we have shown a decided lack of interest in exercising or promoting democracy at home.

This ties into a discussion I had a while back. I think, on a moral level, voting should be mandatory. It is more than a right, it is a duty. The problem comes when you try to actually make it policy. Voting day is not a national holiday, workers are not guaranteed time off, voting credentials are constantly questioned inappropriately, etc. Also, how do you enforce it? Economic penalties? A large portion of the people that aren't voting for all these reasons are doing so because they are already poor. Several other countries do levy a fine for not voting, even absentee, but I'm just not sure that's fair, given our country's current makeup. And I suppose voting is useless if the voter is uninformed, so Gup's perspective may have more relevance. We are in complete agreement in that democracy requires participation - if there is no will to participate, how can we hope to control our own fates?

Law School!

Well, now that I've told my boss, I can put it in the blog.

I'm going to law school! It's looking like the University of Michigan, but other possibilities are Columbia, NYU, and Georgetown, depending on what the postal service brings me. I want to go be a constitutional or civil rights lawyer, to work on more issues than I can count, but two really big ones for me are voting rights and reform and and media accountability. Generally, I want to bring more power to the public to make the change they want to see, by giving everyone access to the right information and then making sure their votes count. We need to make sure the US government cannot abuse power like they have the last eight years (and more), and that is what I hope to help do.

An added bonus is that I'll be able to bring more legal insights and other ideas to the blog, which will be fun, at least for me. Not to mention a little more credibility so someone might actually care what I have to say. Anyway, that's where I am - I am now truly a recovering engineer.

Oh, and speaking of voting reform, I'd love to help with this if it's still going when I get there. It's a fascinating idea.