Research Versus Development: Patent Pooling, Innovation and Standardization in the Software Industry, 1 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 274 (2002)

Despite the impressive pace of modern invention, a certain “patent thicket” effect that may be impeding what has become an increasingly difficult road to the commercialization of new technologies. Specifically, as new technologies build upon old technologies, they necessarily become increasingly complex, and as a result, are often subject to the protection of multiple patents, covering both the new cumulative technologies as well as old foundational technologies. The difficulties of acquiring licenses (e.g. hold-out problems) for all such patents has the potential to stifle the development and commercialization of these new technologies. As such, patent pooling, once condemned as facilitating antitrust violations in past eras, has been reintroduced as a practice that, if properly structured, has potentially strong pro-competitive benefits. Patent pooling has the potential to reduce the level of research and invention in new technologies that can compete with an incumbent standard. Recent patent jurisprudence and lenient federal antitrust agency of recent patent pooling proposals seem to create an environment that encourages the resurgence of patent pooling

Principles of Security and Trust

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Principles of Security and Trust, POST 2019, which took place in Prague, Czech Republic, in April 2019, held as part of the European Joint Conference on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2019. The 10 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. They deal with theoretical and foundational aspects of security and trust, including on new theoretical results, practical applications of existing foundational ideas, and innovative approaches stimulated by pressing practical problems

Twilight of the Idols? EU Internet Privacy and the Post Enlightenment Paradigm

This Article provides a timely examination of the European Union\u27s approach to information privacy on the internet, an approach that some legal scholars have held up as a model for law reform in the United States. Building on the author\u27s recent piece discussing the U.S. approach to internet privacy, this Article applies to the EU\u27s internet privacy regime a theoretical framework constructed from the writings of philosopher and social theorist Alasdair MacIntyre on the failures of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. The EU internet privacy regime is shown to reflect and reinforce three key elements of the post-Enlightenment paradigm, i.e., the sovereign individual, the market, and the administrative bureaucracy. The EU regime, like the U.S. internet privacy regime, stems from and helps to preserve a world in which the individual constructs a personal identity by trading personal information as a commodity to corporate bureaucracies in a regulated market under the supervision of impersonal government bureaucracies. In what Macintyre labels the culture of bureaucratic individualism, each new assertion of the individual\u27s supposed fundamental right to privacy paradoxically enhances bureaucratic power. Because in these fundamental respects the EU internet privacy regime resembles the U.S. regime, the Article contends that debate over which regime is superior is little more than a family quarrel, a quarrel that cannot be resolved under the post-Enlightenment paradigm. This Article identifies and discusses important new questions about the extent to which our post-Enlightenment situation constrains our capacity to imagine and act upon innovative approaches to personal privacy

The development of fully automated RULA assessment system based on Computer Vision

The purpose of this study was to develop an automated, RULA-based posture assessment system using a deep learning algorithm to estimate RULA scores, including scores for wrist posture, based on images of workplace postures. The proposed posture estimation system reported a mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.86 on the validation dataset obtained by randomly splitting 20% of the original training dataset before data augmentation. The results of the proposed system were compared with those of two experts’ manual evaluation by computing the Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), which yielded index values greater than 0.75, thereby confirming good agreement between manual raters and the proposed system. This system will reduce the time required for postural evaluation while producing highly reliable RULA scores that are consistent with those generated by manual approach. Thus, we expect that this study will aid ergonomic experts in conducting RULA-based surveys of occupational postures in workplace conditions

Innovation Agents

The standard narrative of entrepreneurship is one of self-employed creative individuals working out of their garage or independently owned start-up companies. Intrapreneurship--where employees are responsible for being alert to new opportunities inside firms--is another model for developing innovations. Relatively little is known, however, about the latter process through which large, complex firms engage in groundbreaking corporate entrepreneurship. This Article\u27s focus is on these types of innovation agents. It provides a thorough account of the positive and negative spillovers of intrapreneurial firms while making the following key points: First, intrapreneurial companies utilize their economies of scale, scope, and age to deliver innovations to the masses. They transform ideas, labor, and raw materials into tangible assets that can be traded in the market. Second, in doing so they offer individual entrepreneurs opportunities to capitalize their knowledge. Sustaining entrepreneurs\u27 prospects for supra-competitive profits is the main engine that motivates the latter to invest in discoveries in the first place. Lastly, intrapreneurial firms also serve as greenhouses for entrepreneurship through the migration of their own talented labor in the market. While these spillovers have tremendous societal benefits, they can also introduce harms. First, the race for the next breakthrough might result in anticompetitive behavior by rivals who conspire with employees-intrapreneurs to leave their firms and take with them confidential information. Second, intrapreneurs often aspire to undertake their own independent journey. In so doing, they leave secure positions and high salaries while carrying valuable knowledge and expertise. This, in return, often prompts intrapreneurial firms to act opportunistically and lock-in or lock-out intrapreneurs in restrictive and wasteful arrangements. As a solution, this Article proposes ways law can balance the positive and negative spillovers of intrapreneurship and ways the tax system can help achieve such result

Innovation Agents

The standard narrative of entrepreneurship is one of self-employed creative individuals working out of their garage or independently owned start-up companies. Intrapreneurship— where employees are responsible for being alert to new opportunities inside firms—is another model for developing innovations. Relatively little is known, however, about the latter process through which large, complex firms engage in groundbreaking corporate entrepreneurship. This Article’s focus is on these types of innovation agents. It provides a thorough account of the positive and negative spillovers of intrapreneurial firms while making the following key points: First, intrapreneurial companies utilize their economies of scale, scope, and age to deliver innovations to the masses. They transform ideas, labor, and raw materials into tangible assets that can be traded in the market. Second, in doing so they offer individual entrepreneurs opportunities to capitalize their knowledge. Sustaining entrepreneurs’ prospects for supra-competitive profits is the main engine that motivates the latter to invest in discoveries in the first place. Lastly, intrapreneurial firms also serve asgreenhouses for entrepreneurship through the migration of their own talented labor in the market. While these spillovers have tremendous societal benefits, they can also introduce harms. First, the race for the next breakthrough might result in anticompetitive behavior by rivals who conspire with employees-intrapreneurs to leave their firms and take with them confidential information. Second, intrapreneurs often aspire to undertake their own independent journey. In so doing, they leave secure positions and high salaries while carrying valuable knowledge and expertise. This, in return, often prompts intrapreneurial firms to act opportunistically and lock-in or lock-out intrapreneurs in restrictive and wasteful arrangements. As a solution, this Article proposes ways law can balance the positive and negative spillovers of intrapreneurship and ways the tax system can help achieve such result

Engaging an Unengaged Demographic: A Phenomenological Study of Christian Millennials’ Engagement with Religious and Nonreligious Memberships

Church membership is declining worldwide. Studies show that Millennials are less likely to belong to a church than previous generations. Even among churched Millennials, only 48% of church-attending Millennials are church members. Simultaneously, organizations such as health, fitness, and social clubs are seeing an increase in Millennial membership growth. Brand loyalty is high among Millennials, but church loyalty is low even among practicing Christian Millennials who attend church at least once per month. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore how practicing Christian Millennials understand the nature of engagement with church and nonreligious memberships and the factors that shape those commitments. Practicing Christian Millennials were generally defined as anyone born between 1981 and 1996 who self-identified as a Christian and attended a trinitarian Protestant church in the United States at least once per month. The methodology guiding this study was Husserl’s phenomenological approach to gaining insight into the phenomenon of Christian Millennials’ engagement rates with religious and nonreligious memberships

Briefs

Legal practice pros take three-day look at \u27Advancing Professionalism\u27; Professor, student join forces to study deterrent power of capital punishment; Bergstrom Foundation endows summer training for child welfare specialists; Wide-ranging looks at healthcare, terrorism, technology and international law; New seminars offer look at character-building, civic responsibility; Videoconferencing opens new doors for interviews; David Evans: tailoring the new to invigorate the old; Faculty Commons designer Mark Hampto