Digital Commons Network^™

The International Intellectual Property Roots Of Geographical Indications, Ruth Okediji

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No abstract provided.

Punitive Damages And Valuing Harm, Alexandra B. Klass

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In 2003, the Supreme Court created a presumption that only single-digit ratios of punitive damages to compensatory damages would satisfy substantive due process limits. The exception to this presumption is when the defendant's misconduct results in only a small amount of compensatory damages or when harm is difficult to value. This Article proposes that while lower courts have properly departed from single-digit ratios where the compensatory damage are small, they have had more difficulty doing so when harm is difficult to value. As a result, lower courts are mechanically applying a single-digit ratio in cases where the Court's current framework …

The Magnificence Of The Disaster: Reconstructing The Sony Bmg Rootkit Incident, Deirdre K. Mulligan, Aaron Perzanowski

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Late in 2005, Sony BMG released millions of Compact Discs containing digital rights management technologies that threatened the security of its customers' computers and the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This Article aims to identify the market, technological, and legal factors that appear to have led a presumably rational actor toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.

The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG's deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG's internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security …

Lawful Personal Use, Jessica D. Litman

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Despite having sued more than 20,000 of its customers,2 the recording industry wants the world to know that it has no complaint with personal use. Copyright lawyers of all stripes agree that copyright includes a free zone in which individuals may make personal use of copyrighted works without legal liability.3 Unlike other nations, though, the United States hasn't drawn the borders of its lawful personal use zone by statute.4 Determining the circumstances under which personal use of copyrighted works will be deemed lawful is essentially a matter of inference and analogy, and differently striped copyright lawyers will differ vehemently on …

Collateralizing Intellectual Property, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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This Article identifies and critiques the collateralization of intellectual property, revealing the complexity of intersecting secured transaction law, namely Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, and doctrinal intellectual property laws such as patent law, copyright law, and trademark law. The inquiry challenges the silence surrounding the pervasive use of intellectual property as collateral in secured financing and suggests changes to the existing framework on secured financing law.

The Article proceeds as follows: Part II discusses the normative intellectual property rights for patents, copyrights, and trademarks and how such rights are utilized as corporate assets. Part III describes different forms …

The Use And Misuse Of High-Tech Evidence By Prosecutors: Ethical And Evidentiary Issues, Robert Aronson, Jacqueline Mcmurtrie

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This essay first addresses the ethical and evidentiary standards for the emerging use of high-tech computer-generated animations and computer-assisted closing arguments. Next, this essay considers the same questions within the context of forensic DNA evidence. Third, this essay considers the ethics of prosecutors' use of such evidence and the consequences for the misuse of this evidence. Finally, this essay suggests remedies to ethical problems facing prosecutors in their use of this kind of evidence.

The Immigration-Terrorism Illusory Correlation And Heuristic Mistake, Mary De Ming Fan

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The national broil over immigration reform is fermenting an illusory correlation and mistaken heuristic. Two events illustrate the involvement of legislators in the manufacture and mplification of this heuristic mistake. A controversial bill passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005 explicitly and extensively packaged immigration control with antiterrorism.' During his term as a congressman, J. D. Hayworth published a book claiming that inflows of people over the U.S.-Mexico border pose a "terrorist threat," that the nation has witnessed an "illegal alien crime spree," and that high immigration rates from Mexico threaten social instability.[para] Such pronouncements by legislators generate …

Applications Of Photography In Distillation Research, Andrew Davidhazy

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Another "vintage" article (in Word document format) from 1969 describing several applications of photography in the Distillation Research Laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology. Added here in June 2007.

Heller On The Ancients, Katie Terezakis

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This is a chapter from the book, Ethics and Heritage

An Analysis Of The Determinants Of Mis Faculty Salary Offers, Thomas Tribunella, M. Pamela Neely, Clyde Eiríkur Hull

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Much research has been published related to compensation in academic fields such as finance, accounting and economics; however, little attention has been paid to Management Information Systems (MIS). Conspicuously absent from the literature are in-depth studies of faculty compensation and its relationship to research productivity for MIS faculty. This study examines compensation, rank, and publication data collected from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) 2003-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2006 MIS Salary Surveys. MIS faculty who were newly employed or changed positions filled out the online survey at the AIS Web site on a self-selected productivity and institutional teaching load are reported as …

Teaching Professional Selling: A Relationship Building Process, Philip Tyler, Neil Hair

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Professional selling is a relationship building process and teaching the subject as a relationship building process has proved to be effective. This paper will detail the approach used to convey the tools, concepts, skills, and attitude required to enter a marketing sales career through the use of creative teaching methods. This paper is organized as follows: Laying the Foundation: Class One, Knowing and Respecting Each other, Interpersonal Skills, Attitude Assignments, Setting Goals, I Love You, Listen, Say Something Nice, Daily Self Assessment, Sales Presentation, A Day with a Sales Representative, Critique of Classmates Sales Presentations, Oral Final Exam, and Wrapping …

A Burkean Perspective On Patent Eligibility, Thomas F. Cotter

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Developments in patent law over the past generation, as exemplified by the Patent Board of Appeals and Interferences' recent decision in Ex parte Lundgren, have all but done away with several venerable principles relating to patent eligibility - among them rules that all patentable inventions must pertain to the technological arts, that they may not read on mental steps, and that patentable processes must effect a physical transformation - in favor of an approach that asks only whether an invention has practical utility and is predictable in its effects. As a result, patentable subject matter now includes both the technological …

Patents, Tax Shelters, And The Firm, Dan L. Burk, Brett Mcdonnell

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Since the landmark State Street decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, patentable subject matter has encompassed business methods, including tax investment strategies. Patents provide approximately twenty years of exclusive rights in the claimed method, in return for public disclosure in a published patent. Typically, the efficacy of specialized investment strategies will be diminished as they become generally known and so widely practiced; for this reason, many tax investment methods have been implemented under confidentiality agreements in order to prevent them from becoming widely practiced. However, patenting of such strategies may allow them to be …

Authorship, Audiences, And Anonymous Speech, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Thomas F. Cotter

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A series of United States Supreme Court decisions establishes that the First Amendment provides a qualified right to speak and publish anonymously, or under a pseudonym. But the Court has never clearly defined the scope of this right. As a result, lower courts have been left with little guidance when it comes to dealing both with the Internet-fueled growth of torts and crimes committed by anonymous speakers, and with the increasing number of lawsuits aimed at silencing legitimate anonymous speech. In this Article, we provide both positive and normative foundations for a comprehensive approach to anonymous speech. We first draw …

Measuring Bullet Speed With A Dynafax Camera, Andrew Davidhazy

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The Dynafax camera by Beckman and Whitley, and now manufactured by Cordin Corporation. is a marvel of photographic engineering. Capable of up to 35,000 pictures per second it has unique characteristics detailed in this article along with an application where it is used to determine the speed of a .22 caliber high velocity bullet. Added here in November 2007.

When The Mind Is Idle..., Wendy Dimatteo

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No abstract provided.

Report To The House Select Committee On Assassination U.S. Congress--House Of Representatives The Oswald Backyard Photographs, Andrew Davidhazy

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This is a report of work done by Dr. Leslie Stroebel, Mr. Andrew Davidhazy and Dr. Ronald Francis of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology regarding an investigation of the authenticity of the Oswald backyard photographs. It was prepared for the U.S. Congress House Select Committee on Assassinations. Although this material is available in many locations on the web it was placed here to give a ready connection to work done by SPAS/RIT faculty. Placed here in December 2007

Francis A. Allen--The Gainesville Years, Jerold H. Israel

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If the legal academy had a Hall of Fame, Frank Allen would surely be a first ballot, unanimous selection.' His nominators need only recite the bare-bones record of his career-his publications, his public service, his years of accomplished teaching, and the many honors he received. That record is neatly capsulized in an obituary, published in the Gainesville Sun, largely written by Frank and June's son, Neil (Neil was also Franks's coauthor on Frank's last publication2). In a concise, precise fashion, reminiscent of Frank's own writings, the obituary not only describes Frank's many accomplishments, but also touches upon his character and …

Nuclear Spirals As Feeding Channels To The Supermassive Black Hole: The Case Of The Galaxy Ngc 6951, Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann, Oli L. Dors, Rogemar A. Riffel, Kambiz Fathi, David J. Axon, Andew Robinson, Alessandro Marconi, Göran Östlin

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We report the discovery of gas streaming motions along nuclear spiral arms towards the LINER nucleus of the galaxy NGC6951. The observations, obtained using the GMOS integral field spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope, yielded maps of the flux distributions and gas kinematics in the H , [Nii] 6584 and [S ii] 6717,31 emission lines of the inner 7′′×15′′ of the galaxy. This region includes a circumnuclear star-forming ring with radius 500 pc, a nuclear spiral inside the ring and the LINER nucleus. The kinematics of the ionized gas is dominated by rotation, but subtraction of a kinematic model of …

In Vitro Toxicity Evaluation Of Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes On Human A549 Lung Cells, Maria Davoren, Eva Herzog, Alan Casey, Benjamin Cottineau, Gordon Chambers, Hugh Byrne, Fiona Lyng

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This paper describes the in vitro cytotoxicity assessment of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) on A549 cells, a human lung cell line. Cellular viability was determined using the alamar blue (AB), neutral red (NR) and MTT assays, which evaluated metabolic, lyso-somal and mitochondrial activity respectively. In addition, the total protein content of the cells was measured using the coomassie bril-liant (CB) blue assay. Supernatants were also assayed for Adenylate Kinase (AK) release and Interleukin 8 (IL-8) which indicated a loss of cell membrane integrity and an in Xammation response respectively.

Second Annual Culp Latcrit Lecture The Constitution Of Terror: Big Lies, Backlash Jurisprudence, And The Rule Of Law In The United States Today, Francisco Valdes

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No abstract provided.

I'M Deaf, But Let's Talk Recovery, Timothy S.

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No abstract provided.

The Acs Fornax Cluster Survey. I. Introduction To The Survey And Data Reduction Procedures, Andrés Jordán, John P. Blakeslee, Patrick Côté, Laura Ferrarese, Leopoldo Infante, Simona Mei, David Merritt, Eric W. Peng, John L. Tonry, Michael J. West

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The Fornax Cluster is a conspicuous cluster of galaxies in the southern hemisphere and the second largest collection of early-type galaxies within < ∼ 20 Mpc after the Virgo Cluster. In this paper, we present a brief introduction to the ACS Fornax Cluster Survey — a program to image, in the F475W (g475) and F850LP (z850) bandpasses, 43 early-type galaxies in Fornax using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Combined with a companion survey of Virgo, the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey, this represents the most comprehensive imaging survey to date of early-type galaxies in cluster environments in terms of depth, spatial resolution, sample size and homogeneity. We describe the selection of the program galaxies, their basic properties, and the main science objectives of the survey which include the measurement of luminosities, colors and structural parameters for globular clusters associated with these galaxies, an analysis of their isophotal properties and surface brightness profiles, and an accurate calibration of the surface brightness fluctuation distance indicator. Finally, we discuss the data reduction procedures adopted for the survey.

The Investor Compensation Fund, Alicia J. Davis

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The prevailing view among securities regulation scholars is that compensating victims of secondary market securities fraud is inefficient. As the theory goes, diversified investors are as likely to be on the gaining side of a transaction tainted by fraud as the losing side. Therefore, such investors should have no expected net losses from fraud because their expected losses will be matched by expected gains. This Article argues that this view is flawed; even diversified investors can suffer substantial losses from fraud, presenting a compelling case for compensation. The interest in compensation, however, should be advanced by better means than are …

Can China Promote Electronic Commerce Through Law Reform? Some Preliminary Case Study Evidence, Jane K. Winn, Song Yuping

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The government of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) has announced its intention to make China a global leader in innovation by 2020. Many Chinese business leaders share this goal. The primary focus of this national strategy is to transform China into an exporter of high-technology products based on Chinese designs rather than merely a low cost, high volume manufacturer of products based on technology developed in other countries.

This paper will examine the implications for this strategy with regard to the use of computerized management information systems by Chinese businesses, and its relationship to recent law reform efforts intended …

Computational Trust In Web Content Quality: A Comparative Evalutation On The Wikipedia Project, Pierpaolo Dondio

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The problem of identifying useful and trustworthy information on the World Wide Web is becoming increasingly acute as new tools such as wikis and blogs simplify and democratize publication. It is not hard to predict that in the future the direct reliance on this material will expand and the problem of evaluating the trustworthiness of this kind of content become crucial. The Wikipedia project represents the most successful and discussed example of such online resources. In this paper we present a method to predict Wikipedia articles trustworthiness based on computational trust techniques and a deep domain-specific analysis. Our assumption is …

Private Liability For Reckless Consumer Lending, John A. E. Pottow

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Congress recently enacted amendments to the Bankruptcy Code that possess the overarching theme of cracking down on debtors due to the increasing rate at which individuals have been filing for bankruptcy. Taking into account the correlation between the overall rise in consumer credit card debt and the rate of individual bankruptcy filings, the author nevertheless hypothesizes that not all credit card debt is troubling. Instead, the author proposes that the catalyst driving individual bankruptcy rates higher than ever is the level of "bad credit"-or credit extended to individuals even though there is a reasonable likelihood that the individual will be …

The Kerr Principle, State Action, And Legal Rights, Donald J. Herzog

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A Baltimore library refused to admit Louise Kerr to a training program because she was black. Not that it had anything against blacks, but its patrons did. When Kerr launched a civil suit against the library alleging a violation of equal protection of the laws, the courts credited the library's claim that it had no racist purpose, but Kerr still prevailed-even though the case occurred before Title VII and Brown v. Board of Education. Here a neutral and generally applicable rule ("serve the patrons"), when coupled with particular facts about private parties (the white patrons dislike blacks), yielded an …

Does Nonprofit Ownership Matter?, Jill R. Horwitz

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In recent years, policymakers have increasingly questioned whether nonprofit institutions, particularly hospitals, merit tax exemption. They argue that nonprofit hospitals differ little from their for-profit counterparts in the provision of charity care and, therefore, should either lose their tax-exempt status or adhere to new, strict, and specific requirements to provide free services for the poor. In this Article, I present evidence that hospital ownership-whether it is for-profit, nonprofit, or government owned-has a significant effect on the mix of medical services it offers. Despite notoriously weak enforcement mechanisms, nonprofit hospitals act in the public interest by providing services that are unlikely …

Tax Consequences When A New Employer Bears The Cost Of The Employee's Terminating A Prior Employment Relationship, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

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The next few months will be busy ones for moving companies that have NCAA basketball coaches as customers. In the past few months, several men's college basketball coaches have accepted jobs at different schools. Several of those coaches, who were still under contract at their former institution, had buy out provisions that allowed them to terminate their relationship for a set price. John Beilein is a prominent example of this since his buy out price was so high. Last season, Beilein was the head basketball coach at West Virginia University where he was under contract with the school until 2012. …