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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Undue Hardship In The Bankruptcy Courts: An Empirical Assessment Of The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo, Michelle R. Lacey Jan 2005

Undue Hardship In The Bankruptcy Courts: An Empirical Assessment Of The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo, Michelle R. Lacey

Scholarship@WashULaw

The discharge in bankruptcy embodies the policy that relief should be granted to an individual who has ceased to be economically productive by virtue of burdensome debt obligations (the fresh start policy). Once the debtor has been deemed eligible for discharge, forgiveness of debt is automatic, accomplished through legislative rule and its judicial enforcement. With regard to the discharge of educational debt, however, Congress has devolved the exercise of debt relief to courts. An obligation to repay such debt will be discharged if a debtor establishes that undue hardship would be suffered in the absence of its discharge. A court …


Disclosure As A Strategy In The Patent Race, Scott Baker, Claudio Mezzetti Jan 2005

Disclosure As A Strategy In The Patent Race, Scott Baker, Claudio Mezzetti

Scholarship@WashULaw

Research firms disclose a surprisingly large amount of information to the patent office through “targeted” disclosures, that is, disclosures intended to make the patent office aware of potentially patentable information. Conventional wisdom holds that these disclosures are made for defensive purposes; the disclosing firm does not itself plan to pursue patents related to the disclosed information, so the firm discloses to create prior art that might stop rivals from patenting. But firms have an incentive to disclose even if they intend to pursue patent protection. The reason is that, by making it more difficult to patent, disclosure extends the patent …