Digital Commons Network^™

Four Questionable Rationales For The Patent Misuse Doctrine, Thomas F. Cotter

Articles

When a patent infringement defendant succeeds in proving that the patent owner has misused its patent, the patent is rendered unenforceable unless and until the misuse is purged. Case law has never clearly articulated precise criteria for determining the boundaries of the misuse doctrine, however. Although the misuse doctrine overlaps to some extent with substantive antitrust law, for example, under current law not every instance of misuse is necessarily an antitrust violation, and not every patent-related antitrust violation necessarily constitutes misuse. In this paper, I identify four possible justifications for the patent misuse doctrine that, in theory, could provide guidance …

Don't Panic! Defending Cowardly Interventions During And After A Financial Crisis, Brett Mcdonnell

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How should we regulate the U.S. financial system after the financial crisis, when we face the task with a radically inadequate understanding of what went wrong and what effect proposed regulations will likely have? This paper explores three quite different approaches to regulating in the face of severe uncertainty: the libertarianism of Friedrich Hayek, the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott, and the liberalism of John Maynard Keynes. Each thought deeply about the problem of how uncertainty affects human affairs, but each came to quite different conclusions about how to address such uncertainty. The paper outlines the core, immensely useful insights of …

Diagonal Federalism And Climate Change: Implications For The Obama Administration, Hari M. Osofsky

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The Obama Administration’s efforts on climate change continue to face daunting challenges domestically and internationally. This Article makes a novel contribution by exploring how the Obama Administration can meet these challenges more effectively though systematically addressing the multiscalar character of climate change in the areas where it has greater regulatory control. Mitigating and adapting to climate change pose complex choices at individual, community, local, state, national, and international levels. The Article argues that these choices lead to many diagonal regulatory interactions: that is, dynamics among a wide range of public and private actors which simultaneously cut across levels of government …

The Role Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child In Interpreting And Developing International Humanitarian Law, David Weissbrodt, Joseph C. Hansen, Nathaniel H. Nesbitt

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The interaction between human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL) has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Commentators note the increased presence of IHL in the work of human rights bodies. There remains an interesting gap in the debate, however: while human rights bodies may be referencing international humanitarian law, what are they doing with it? To what extent are they interpreting its protections under a human rights framework? Are they performing substantive or precedential analysis of IHL? This article addresses one measure of that gap by comprehensively examining the work of the Committee on the Rights of …

The Influence Of Thermal Expansion Of A Composite Material On Embedded Polarimetric Sensors, Manjusha Ramakrishnan, Ginu Rajan, Yuliya Semenova, Piotr Lesiak, Andrzej Domanski, Tomasz Wolinksi, Anna Boczkowska, Gerald Farrell

Articles

Abstract. Some of the most critical issues of the influence of the thermal expansion of composite materials on embedded polarimetric sensors for measurements of strain and temperature are studied in this paper. A composite material sample with polarimetric fiber sensors embedded in two distinct layers of a multi-layer composite structure is fabricated and characterized. The polarimetric fiber sensors used in this study are based on panda type fiber and polarization maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF). The temperature sensitivities of polarimetric fiber sensors with acrylate buffer coated and buffer stripped polarization maintaining optical fibers are measured in free space and compared …

Using An Adaptive Scenarios Approach To Establish Strategies For Tomorrow’S Workplace, Ruth Saurin, John Radcliffe

Articles

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is important to have a methodological process that is reflexive and flexible to achieve fluid interactions that add rigour and energy to the overall process of a built environment project. Therefore, it outlines three phases of the Prospective Through Scenarios futures process used in a study called the “Workplace of the Future”. It also discusses how and why the methodology evolved during the course of the project with participant feedback as the main source of information for the analysis. Furthermore, novel qualitative futures techniques have been applied to a discipline that is usually …

Natural Convection In An Internally Finned Phase Change Material Heat Sink For The Thermal Management Of Photovoltaics, M. J. Huang, P. C. Eames, Brian Norton, N. J. Hewitt

Articles

Elevated operating temperatures reduce the solar to electrical conversion efficiency of building integrated photovoltaic devices (BIPV). Phase change materials (PCM) can be used to passively limit this temperature rise although their effectiveness is limited by their low thermal conductivities and by crystallization segregation during solidification. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of the effects of convection and crystalline segregation in a PCM as a function of efficiency of heat transfer within the finned PV/PCM system. The thermal performances of bulk PCM with crystallization segregation for different internal fin arrangements are presented. It is noted that the addition of internal fins …

Helping Haiti In The Wake Of Disaster: Law Students As First Responders, Melissa Gibson Swain, Jonel Newman

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No abstract provided.

Perspective: Massachusetts' Health Care Reform And Emergency Department Utilization, Christopher Chen, Gabriel Scheffler, Amitabh Chandra

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No abstract provided.

Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Caroline Bettinger-López, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain, Jonel Newman, Sarah Paoletti, Deborah M. Weissman

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No abstract provided.

Changing Property In A Changing World: A Call For The End Of Perpetual Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley

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No abstract provided.

O My Sons And Daughters, How Do I Immiserate Thee: Let Me Count The Ways, Kenneth M. Casebeer

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No abstract provided.

Procedural Protection Of Constitutional Rights In Brazil, Keith S. Rosenn

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Brazil has developed one of the most complex systems of judicial review in the world. In addition, it has developed a wide variety of constitutional actions for the purpose of protecting the huge number of constitutional rights conferred by its lengthy Constitution. In theory, constitutional rights can be protected in ordinary actions. Because ordinary actions typically take a great many years to resolve in Brazil, the framers of the 1988 Constitution, building on Brazil's prior constitutions and foreign models, constitutionalized a wide array of procedural devices to try to assure that the huge number of individual, social and economic rights …

The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William Wilson Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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The fraud-on-the-market class action no longer enjoys much academic support. The justifications traditionally advanced by its defenders-compensation for out-of-pocket loss and deterrence of fraud-are thought to have failed due to the action's real world dependence on enterprise liability and issuer-funded settlements. The compensation justification collapses when considered from the point of view of different types of shareholders. Well-diversified shareholders' receipts and payments of damages balance over time and amount to a wash before payment of litigation costs. The shareholders arguably in need of compensation--fundamental value investors who rely on published reports--are undercompensated due to pro rata distribution of settlement proceeds …

The Case For Dividend Deduction, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Amir C. Chenchinski

Articles

The December 2010 compromise between President Barack Obama and the Republicans extended the 15% tax rate on dividends through the end of 2012. At that point, however, the rate may revert to the Clinton administration rate-39.6%-or be raised to 20%-as proposed by the Obama Administration. Thus, the United States may either abandon corporate-shareholder integration, maintain partial integration, or perhaps even adopt the George W Bush administration's 2003 proposal to exempt dividends altogether-as advocated by some Republicans in Congress. Given this uncertainty and the likelihood of additional Congressional action, now may be a good time to revisit the integration issue. Another …

Taxation As Regulation: Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

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This paper addresses three questions: 1. Is regulation a legitimate goal for taxation? 2. Which tax is best suited for regulation? 3. Would it be better to allocate just one goal per tax among the major taxes (individual and corporate income tax and VAT)? It then analyzes the proposed bank tax and the enacted health care tax as regulatory taxes, and concludes that the first is desirable (as is a carbon tax) but the second is not.

Provigil: A Commentary, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Michael Carrier's case study on Provigil' offers new support for the view that Big Pharma is to blame for stymieing competition, retarding innovation, and inflating prices in the drug industry. Carrier argues that Cephalon was able to thwart generic entry by a combination of anticompetitive strategies. It entered into a reverse payment settlement agreement with generics seeking to enter the market. These settlements purported to allow generic entry before the expiration of the patent period, but, according to Carrier, the promise of early entry was negated by the second prong of Cephalon's anticompetitive strategy. During the time that it had …

Another Word On The President's Statutory Authority Over Agency Action, Nina A. Mendelson

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In this short symposium contribution, I attempt first to add some further evidence on the interpretive question. That evidence weighs strongly, in my view, in favor of Kagan's conclusion that the terminology does not communicate any particular congressional intent regarding presidential directive authority. Assessed in context, the "whole code" textual analysis presented by Stack does not justify the conclusion that Congress, by delegating to an executive branch official, meant to limit presidential control. Independent agencies excluded, interpreting the terms of simple and presidential delegations to speak to directive authority fails, in general, to make sense of the various statutes. Absent …

Why It's Called The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley, Jill R. Horwitz

Articles

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ACA”) raises numerous policy and legal issues, but none have attracted as much attention from lawyers as Section 1501. This provision, titled “Maintenance of Mini-mum Essential Coverage,” but better known as the “individual mandate,” requires most Americans to obtain health insurance for themselves and their dependents by 2014. We are dismayed that the narrow issue of the mandate and the narrower issue of free riding have garnered so much attention when our nation’s health-care system suffers from countless problems. By improving quality, controlling costs, and extending coverage to the uninsured, the …

Examining The Reality Of Foreign National Child Victims Of Human Trafficking In The United States, Bridgette A. Carr

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Human traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of other people. Poverty, lack of education, and language barriers are keys that human traffickers use to successfully exploit others. For foreign national children who have been trafficked in the United States, these same vulnerabilities are often ignored by the immigration system. From its inception, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) has been touted as a tool to combat grave human rights violations that affect children. In fact, the TVPA's legislative history is rife with stories, statistics, and anecdotes involving children-often young girls. The TVPA has always recognized the failure of a one-size-fits-all approach …

Introduction To Special Symposium Feature: Successes And Failures In International Human Trafficking Law, Bridgette A. Carr

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The Essays in this issue of the Michigan Journal of International Law showcase the results of an important and historic symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School in February 2011. Acknowledging the ten-year anniversary of both the international Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking Protocol), and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the United States, the conference brought together an extraordinary group of legal scholars, government officials, and practitioners to examine the successes and failures in international human trafficking law. The need to evaluate both the successes and failures in antitrafficking law is …

Paper Thin: Freedom And Re-Enslavement In The Diaspora Of The Haitian Revolution, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

In the summer of 1809 a flotilla of boats arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 9,000 Saint-Domingue refugees recently expelled from the Spanish colony of Cuba. These migrants nearly doubled the population of New Orleans, renewing its Francophone character and populating the neighborhoods of the Vieux Carre and Faubourg Marigny. At the heart of the story of their disembarkation, however, is a legal puzzle. Historians generally tell us that the arriving refugees numbered 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color, and 3,226 slaves. But slavery had been abolished in Saint-Domingue by decree in 1793, and abolition had been ratified …

The Rise In Elder Bankruptcy Filings And The Failure Of U.S. Bankruptcy Law, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

Recent empirical legal scholarship on the consumer bankruptcy system has uncovered a marked rise in the proportion of elder Americans filing for relief under the Bankruptcy Code. But these studies have not probed the reasons behind that rise, an omission this Article seeks to address. Professor John Pottow and colleagues recently assembled the new dataset of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), the largest national sample of consumer debtors in this country, which he uses to explore the sources of elder bankruptcy. The findings are both striking and ominous. While multiple factors, such as health problems and medical debts, contribute to …

An Evaluation Of A Novel Instrument For Measuring Macular Pigment Optical Density: The Mps 9000, James Loughman, Grainne Scanlon, John Nolan, Veronica O'Dwyer, Stephen Beatty

Articles

Purpose:  Of the antioxidants found in the human retina, only the macular carotenoid quantities can be estimated noninvasively (albeit in a collective fashion), thus facilitating study of their role in that tissue. The aim of this study was to evaluate concordance between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) values recorded on a commercially available instrument, the MPS 9000, with those of an already validated heterochromatic flicker photometry instrument. Also, we assessed and compared test–retest variability for each instrument.

Methods:  Macular pigment optical density at 0.5 retinal eccentricity was measured using two different heterochromatic flicker photometers, the MPS 9000 and the Macular …

One Student One Family And The Mozambique Eyecare Project, Stephen Thompson, Aoife Phelan, Tatiana Santana, Elizebete Catarino, Vivien Ocampo, Cesar Faria, James Loughman

Articles

Background - The Mozambique Eyecare Programme is funded by Irish Aid and designed to address the need for optometric education in Lusophone Africa. It is a multi-partner collaboration between Universidade Lúrio, Mozambique, Technological University Dublin, Ireland, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and The International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE) an international Non Government Organisation. A key output from the programme is the development of an optometry school based at Universidade Lúrio, the first of its kind in Mozambique. The aim is to address unmet eye care needs through human resource development.

All students enrolled at Universidade Lúrio, including the optometry …

Macular Pigment: Its Associations With Color Discrimination And Matching, Peter Davison, Akkali Makunda, James Loughman, Grainne Scanlon, John Nolan, Stephen Beatty

Articles

Purpose

Macular pigment (MP) acts as a pre-receptoral filter which selectively absorbs short wavelengths. It has the potential to alter color vision but the literature is conflicting on whether it does and, if so, to what extent, possibly reflecting differences between color mechanisms and color tests. This study was designed to identify and investigate relationships, if any, between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) and color sensitivity using a battery of techniques to quantify the color vision of color-normal observers.

Methods

Color vision was assessed with the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue test (FM100), Moreland match on the HMC anomaloscope, and a customized SWAP …

Soft Contact Lens-Induced Corneal Warpage, Aoife Lloyd Mckernan, Luisa Simo Mannion, Linda Moore

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No abstract provided.

Online Amd Research Study For Optometrists: Current Practice In The Republic Of Ireland And Uk, James Loughman, John Nolan, James Stack, Stephen Beatty

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No abstract provided.

Assessing The Mechanism Of Microbial Inactivation During Ozone Pocessing, Sonal Patil, Vasilis Valdramidis, Kimon Karatzas, Patrick J. Cullen, Paula Bourke

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Ozone has numerous applications in food industry because of its advantages over traditional preservation techniques. Damage to cell membranes and cytoplasmic contents was proposed as involved in ozone inactivation but there is no available information concerning oxidative stress effect of ozone on regulated knockout genes and the protection or sensitivity of microbial mutants (lacking these genes) against ozone or ozone generated radicals. The aim of this work was to investigate the mechanism of action of ozone on microbial populations during the treatment of liquid food systems. E. coli BW25113 and its isogenic mutants in soxR, soxS, oxyR, …

The Effect Of Untreated And Enzyme-Treated Commercial Dairy Powders On The Growth And Adhesion Of Streptococcus Mutans, Rachel Halpin, D.B. Brady, E.D. O’Riordan, M. O’Sullivan

Articles

Dental caries is a common bacterial infection, but the progression of this disease can be delayed by preventing initial attachment of cariogenic bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans to tooth surfaces. This study firstly compares the effect of untreated (UT) and enzyme-treated (ET) dairy powders on the adherence of S. mutans to hydroxylapatite (HA), an analogue of tooth enamel. A fluorescence-based method was used to quantify adherence of S. mutans to HA both in the presence (S-HA) and absence (PBS-HA) of saliva. Secondly, binding of proteins present in the test materials to HA was quantified using bicinchonic acid assays and SDS-PAGE. …