Are We There Yet? : Reflections on the Success of the Environment Law Movement in Ontario

In this short article, the author explores the history of the environmental law movement in Canada and explains how this history has affected many of the environmental laws and trends today. With a focus on Ontario, the author reports back from a round table discussion held in Toronto in early 2008. Some of Canada\u27s leading environmental lawyers, as well as many of the pioneers of the environmental law movement, reflected at the round table on the extent to which their aspirations for strong, effective environmental laws have been met and how much more remains to be done. While we are not there yet, much has been accomplished. More importantly, a new generation of environmental lawyers has taken up the challenge of those early pioneers, and promises to advocate for environmental laws and policies that will ensure a safe and healthy environment for future generations

Sleeping patents: any reason to wake up?

Patents are typically characterized as very valuable assets for firms. Nevertheless, there are many patents in a firm's portfolio that are actually never used. In this paper, we claim that there is a relationship between a firm's decision to use or not to use a patent and the characteristics of the underlying invention. We characterize patent use according to the sleeping or non-sleeping character of the patents in the firm's portfolio. We characterize the underlying invention along different dimensions captured by the patent, i.e. importance, strategic fit, scope and innovativeness. We perform an empirical analysis on a set of patent-active firms in the chemicals industry that trade some of their patents through what is currently the only website specialized in firm technology transfer through the Internet, yet2.com. We use The NBER Patent Citations Data File to obtain information about the patents granted to these firms. Our results suggest that sleeping patents are more innovative, broader and no less important than their counterparts. We conclude that such patents are worth waking up, especially when the underlying invention is applicable to business areas far away from the patentholder's strategic core. These results suggest that there is potential for markets for technology to develop.Patents; innovativeness;

Detailed Spectral Modeling of a 3-D Pulsating Reverse Detonation Model: Too Much Nickel

We calculate detailed NLTE synthetic spectra of a Pulsating Reverse Detonation (PRD) model, a novel explosion mechanism for Type Ia supernovae. While the hydro models are calculated in 3-D, the spectra use an angle averaged hydro model and thus some of the 3-D details are lost, but the overall average should be a good representation of the average observed spectra. We study the model at 3 epochs: maximum light, seven days prior to maximum light, and 5 days after maximum light. At maximum the defining Si II feature is prominent, but there is also a prominent C II feature, not usually observed in normal SNe Ia near maximum. We compare to the early spectrum of SN 2006D which did show a prominent C II feature, but the fit to the observations is not compelling. Finally we compare to the post-maximum UV+optical spectrum of SN 1992A. With the broad spectral coverage it is clear that the iron-peak elements on the outside of the model push too much flux to the red and thus the particular PRD realizations studied would be intrinsically far redder than observed SNe Ia. We briefly discuss variations that could improve future PRD models.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Ap

The Market for Patents in Europe

By using the PatVal-EU dataset we find that the most important determinant of patent licensing is firm size. Patent breadth, value, protection, and other factors suggested by the literature also have an impact, but not as important. In addition, most of these factors affect the willingness to license, but not whether a license actually takes place. We discuss why this suggests that there are transaction costs in the markets for technology. The issue is important because many potential licenses are not licensed suggesting that the markets for technology can be larger, with implied economic benefits.Licensing, Patent scope, Complementary assets, Firm size, Markets for technology