Taboo, the Game: Patent Office Edition—The New Preissuance Submissions Under the America Invents Act

Thorough patent examination ensures that issued patents confer constitutionally granted incentives to innovate but do not create inappropriately broad monopolies. Examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office are alone tasked with striking this proper balance, in part by searching the universe of existing published knowledge to determine the originality of the applied-for invention. In 2011, Congress enacted the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which included a provision allowing the public to present examiners with relevant publications that the examiners’ own searches might not otherwise uncover. However, this “preissuance submissions” provision and its related administrative rule are tempered by 35 U.S.C. § 122(c) (2006), which prohibits any third-party, pre-grant “protest or other form of [preissuance] opposition” to an application. Thus, although a party may describe to an examiner how its submission is relevant to an application, that party is prohibited from arguing how the submission renders that application unpatentable. This Note argues that Congress should amend § 122(c) to permit preissuance third-party argumentation for two reasons. First, the current scheme arguably violates that law already. Second, a rule allowing submitter argumentation would better incentivize participation by competitive parties who fear that examiners might not recognize their submitted publications\u27 full invalidating potential

Asymmetrical treatment and revenue from regional protest

This study seeks to empirically determine to what extent continual protest by regionalist parties may generate revenue for their regions. To this end, we perform an econometric estimation using the collaboration agreements between Spanish governments and the autonomous communities as the dependent variable (first-level political and administrative divisions, CCAA in their Spanish initials). We test our hypothesis by analogously applying the economic specifications employed in studies of "pork barrel politics", including control variables regarding per capita income, regional financing systems, political variables such as support for regional governments from the same political party or the existence of pivot parties. The results support the theoretical conclusions reached by Treisman (1999), namely that non-sovereignist regionalism generates revenue while sovereignist nationalism or regionalism leads governments to react by applying unfavourable treatment. Similarly, the fact that a regionalist party plays a key role in the investiture of the national president brings with it even greater revenue to the region in question, concurring with the results predicted by Brancati (2008)

Taboo, the Game: Patent Office Edition—The New Preissuance Submissions Under the America Invents Act

Thorough patent examination ensures that issued patents confer constitutionally granted incentives to innovate but do not create inappropriately broad monopolies. Examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office are alone tasked with striking this proper balance, in part by searching the universe of existing published knowledge to determine the originality of the applied-for invention. In 2011, Congress enacted the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which included a provision allowing the public to present examiners with relevant publications that the examiners’ own searches might not otherwise uncover. However, this “preissuance submissions” provision and its related administrative rule are tempered by 35 U.S.C. § 122(c) (2006), which prohibits any third-party, pre-grant “protest or other form of [preissuance] opposition” to an application. Thus, although a party may describe to an examiner how its submission is relevant to an application, that party is prohibited from arguing how the submission renders that application unpatentable. This Note argues that Congress should amend § 122(c) to permit preissuance third-party argumentation for two reasons. First, the current scheme arguably violates that law already. Second, a rule allowing submitter argumentation would better incentivize participation by competitive parties who fear that examiners might not recognize their submitted publications\u27 full invalidating potential

From a suppressed anti-communist dissident movement to a governing party: The transformations of FIDESZ in Hungary

FIDESZ, as an outlawed protest movement of the Kádár era, has preserved their specific type of “outlawed and clandestine” political tradition and identity. A strong anti-communism, a popular mobilizing strategy and an atmosphere of hatred towards the agents of Hungary’s communist past remained within the political culture of the party from the suppressed underground movement. The political generation of leading activists, including current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has been socialized in the “underground” of the eighties. The experience of “being outlawed” under the Communist system has had longlasting effects on them. The “myths”, symbols, and “fights” of the suppressed protest movements keep themselves alive in the new political culture in the present goals and strategies of FIDESZ-MPP. The former protest movement transformed itself into a minority party with liberal affiliations in the new parliament of 1990. However, as the Hungarian Liberal Party (SZDSZ) moved into a governing alliance with the successor to the Communist party, FIDESZ moved to the right, becoming its leading force. Competition between five centre-right parties led to FIDESZ’s control as the leader of a centre-right government (1998-2002). While the socialists (MSZP) and liberals (SZDSZ) became governing forces twice (2002- 2010), FIDESZ became a mobilizing populist party, gaining hegemony within the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition. The economic and financial crisis assisted FIDESZ in mobilizing protest, leading the FIDESZ-KDNP alliance to a two–thirds majority victory in the 2010 elections

State-Directed Political Protest in US Capital Cities: 1998-2001

Using a new dataset, we analyze four years of political protest events in US state capitals, in order to specify the processes and possibilities for collective action at the state level. Drawing from resource mobilization/political process theory, we test hypotheses regarding density of activist communities, political culture, social capital, administrative capacities, and political processes in affecting the number of protests, rallies, and demonstrations directed at state government. We find that the most important factors include the density of contentious communities of individuals (specifically university students), political culture, Democratic Party control of government, and the option to use direct legislation (a negative effect), while administrative capacity, generalized social capital, and party competition have no effects. We also find strong positive baseline effects for the population size of the state, the relative importance of the capital compared to other cities, and urbanization. We argue that these findings illustrate how aggregate levels of state-level political protest arise out of collective action processes and the mobilization of small groups, as mediated through stable cultural repertoires of political tactics and moderated by certain political opportunities and processes.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 13. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Book review: the greens in British politics: protest, anti-austerity and the divided left by James Dennison

In The Greens in British Politics: Protest, Anti-Austerity and the Divided Left, James Dennison draws on statistical data as well as interviews with UK Greens to offer an account of the recent evolution of the Green Party of England and Wales and the Scottish Green Party. While the book suffers from some repetition of content and its findings are somewhat overshadowed by changes in the aftermath of the 2017 General Election, this is still a useful point of departure for future research into the UK Greens, writes Erica Frazier. The Greens in British Politics: Protest, Anti-Austerity and the Divided Left. James Dennison. Palgrave Pivot. 2016

Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

This paper argues that where institutions are strong, actors are more likely to participate in the political process through institutionalized arenas, while where they are weak, protests and other unconventional means of participation become more appealing. This relationship is explored empirically by combining country-level measures of institutional strength with individual-level information on protest participation in 17 Latin American countries. Evidence is found that weaker political institutions are associated with a higher propensity to use alternative means for expressing preferences, that is, to protest. Also found are interesting interactions between country-level institutional strength and some individual-level determinants of participation in protests.Political institutions, Public policies, Institutional strength, Protests, Alternative Political Technologies, Political party representation, Ideology, Ideological extremism, Latin America

Chile Se Moviliza: Protest Movements and Inequality in Post-Dictatorship Chile

On March 11, 1990, Augusto Pinochet, one of Latin America’s most infamous dictators, left office after Chileans ordered him to step down in a nationwide plebiscite. Since Pinochet harshly punished any and all dissenters, protests re-emerged in Chile as a popular form of political action. In this thesis, I examine the relationship between economic and political inequality and the frequency of protests and peaceful demonstrations in the country. I examine the theory behind why people protest, and later examine the history of individual protest movements (such as the Chilean Education Movement). Lastly, I run a regression to evaluate the relationship between GINI coefficient (a popular measure of income inequality) and the frequency of peaceful demonstrations since the end of the dictatorship. Though the regression does not indicate that there is a significant relationship between the two, survey data suggests that Chileans view protest as a legitimate and effective form of political action, and that they have little faith in the government and party system to represent their interests. Thus, I posit that Chileans protest because existing social and political infrastructures are not functioning as they should

The Politics of Protest Avoidance: Policy Windows, Labor Mobilization, and Pension Reform in France

According to Paul Pierson and R. Kent Weaver, the "new politics of the welfare state" is about escaping the popular blame generated by cutbacks affecting a significant portion of the population. Although the concept of blame avoidance helps to explain the political logic of welfare state retrenchment, one can argue that a careful analysis of social policy reform should take into account a largely understudied phenomenon: protest avoidance. Especially present in countries with single party governments and politically active labor unions, protest avoidance is analytically distinct from blame avoidance because it occurs when policy-makers, facing direct and nearly inescapable blame, attempt to reduce the scope of social mobilization triggered by unpopular reforms. In recent decades, successive French governments have successfully introduced major--and unpopular--reforms in the field of pensions, despite the difficulties to frame blame avoidance strategies in the context of France's strong concentration of state power. Focusing on the 1993, 1995, and 2003 pension reform episodes, this paper seeks to demonstrate that right wing governments have generally tried to avoid protest rather than escape blame. We claim that the key element has been avoiding disruptive strike activities by the labor movement, which are highly political in France. We argue that right wing governments have attempted to divide the fragmented labor movement and overload the reform agenda while enacting its most controversial reforms during the summer holiday season. Protest avoidance thus represents a key political variable worthy of study in the literature on welfare state retrenchment. In the future, the concept of protest avoidance could be applied to other countries and policy areas in which elected officials attempt to impose unpopular reforms that trigger social mobilization.protest avoidance; pension reform

Exit, Voice, and Cyclicality: A Micro-Logic of Voting Behaviour in European Parliament Elections

Unlike other classics of political economy, “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty” (EVL) has not sparked many innovations in the field of electoral studies. This paper aims to demonstrate that scholars miss out on a powerful theory of political behaviour by leaving Hirschman’s ideas to other disciplines. To change this, I resolve several theoretical complications that have hampered the application of EVL to democratic elections. On this basis, I construct a model of voting behaviour through the electoral cycle to explain typical “second-order” effects in elections to the European Parliament (EP). Building on the parameters of EVL allows to unite such diverse phenomena as anti-government swings, declining turnout, protest voting, conversion and alienation in one theoretical framework. Testing the model with survey data from the European Election Studies of 1999 and 2004 reveals novel insights into the dynamics at work in EP elections. The role of strategic voting in the form of voice appears to be limited. Instead, processes of de- and realignment in the form of exit dominate a picture of EP elections that undermines the widespread conception of second-order irrelevance