Data-Generating Patents

Patents and trade secrets are often considered economic substitutes. Under this view, inventors can decide either to maintain an invention as a trade secret or to seek a patent and disclose to the public the details of the invention. However, a handful of scholars have recognized that because the patent disclosure requirements are not always rigorous, inventors may sometimes be able to keep certain aspects of an invention secret, yet still receive a patent to the invention as a whole. Here, we provide further insight into how trade secrets and patents may act as complements. Specifically, we introduce the concept of “data-generating patents,” which refer to patents on inventions involving technologies that by design generate valuable data through their operation or use. For instance, genetic tests and medical devices produce data about patients. Internet search engines and social networking websites generate data about the interests of consumers. When data-generating inventions are patented, and the patentee enjoys market power over the invention, by implication, the patentee also effectively enjoys market power over the data generated by the invention. Trade secret law further protects the patentee’s market power over the data, even where that data is in a market distinct from the patented invention and especially after the patent expires or is invalidated. We contend that the use of patents and trade secrets as complements in this manner may sometimes yield socially harmful results. We identify the conditions under which such results occur and make several recommendations to mitigate their effects

Access to Medicines and the Right to (Cultural) Life

Published version available from: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754677611This groundbreaking book is the first collection to investigate together the law, political science and ethical perspectives on the right and value of life

The Invention of Traditional Knowledge

Sunder argues that the failure of intellectual property to recognize the contributions of traditional and natural sources cannot be rectified by mere payment and she posits a non-monetizable, non-utilitarian benefit in terms of worth or dignity in having one\u27s contribution as the subject labelled of an intellectual property right. Foregrounding the important role of raw materials in the process of innovation, cultural environmentalism helped provide a theoretical and political basis for recognition and recompense for the purveyors of those raw materials-often indigenous peoples who have cultivated the earth\u27s biodiversity and who hold traditional knowledge about that biodiversity. Moreover, focus on the effects on the poor of the cultural environmentalism metaphor through its reification of the division between raw and cooked knowledge, a conceptual separation long fundamental to intellecual property law

Diffusion or War? Foucault as a Reader of Tarde

The objective of this chapter is to clarify the social theory underlying in Foucault’s genealogy of power/knowledge thanks to a comparison with Tarde’s microsociology. Nietzsche is often identified as the direct (and unique) predecessor of this genealogy, and the habitual criticisms are worried about the intricate relations between Foucault and Marx. These perspectives omit to point to another – and more direct – antecedent of Foucault`s microphysics: the microsociology of Gabriel Tarde. Bio-power technologies must be read as Tardian inventions that, by propagation, have reconfigured pre-existing social spaces, building modern societies. We will see how the Tardean source in Foucault’s genealogy sheds new clarity about the micro-socio-logic involved in it, enabling us to identify some of its aporiae and to imagine some solutions in this respect as well

Creativity as Cognitive design \ud The case of mesoscopic variables in Meta-Structures\ud

Creativity is an open problem which has been differently approached by several disciplines since a long time. In this contribution we consider as creative the constructivist design an observer does on the description levels of complex phenomena, such as the self-organized and emergent ones ( e.g., Bènard rollers, Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, flocks, swarms, and more radical cognitive and social emergences). We consider this design as related to the Gestaltian creation of a language fit for representing natural processes and the observer in an integrated way. Organised systems, both artificial and most of the natural ones are designed/ modelled according to a logical closed model which masters all the inter-relation between their constitutive elements, and which can be described by an algorithm or a single formal model. We will show there that logical openness and DYSAM (Dynamical Usage of Models) are the proper tools for those phenomena which cannot be described by algorithms or by a single formal model. The strong correlation between emergence and creativity suggests that an open model is the best way to provide a formal definition of creativity. A specific application relates to the possibility to shape the emergence of Collective Behaviours. Different modelling approaches have been introduced, based on symbolic as well as sub-symbolic rules of interaction to simulate collective phenomena by means of computational emergence. Another approach is based on modelling collective phenomena as sequences of Multiple Systems established by percentages of conceptually interchangeable agents taking on the same roles at different times and different roles at the same time. In the Meta-Structures project we propose to use mesoscopic variables as creative design, invention, good continuity and imitation of the description level. In the project we propose to define the coherence of sequences of Multiple Systems by using the values taken on by the dynamic mesoscopic clusters of its constitutive elements, such as the instantaneous number of elements having, in a flock, the same speed, distance from their nearest neighbours, direction and altitude. In Meta-Structures the collective behaviour’s coherence corresponds, for instance, to the scalar values taken by speed, distance, direction and altitude along time, through statistical strategies of interpolation, quasi-periodicity, levels of ergodicity and their reciprocal relationship. In this case the constructivist role of the observer is considered creative as it relates to neither non-linear replication nor transposition of levels of description and models used for artificial systems, like reductionism. Creativity rather lies in inventing new mesoscopic variables able to identify coherent patterns in complex systems. As it is known, mesoscopic variables represent partial macroscopic properties of a system by using some of the microscopic degrees of freedom possessed by composing elements. Such partial usage of microscopic as well as macroscopic properties allows a kind of Gestaltian continuity and imitation between levels of descriptions for mesoscopic modelling. \ud \u

The art, poetics, and grammar of technological innovation as practice, process, and performance

Usually technological innovation and artistic work are seen as very distinctive practices, and innovation of technologies is understood in terms of design and human intention. Moreover, thinking about technological innovation is usually categorized as “technical” and disconnected from thinking about culture and the social. Drawing on work by Dewey, Heidegger, Latour, and Wittgenstein and responding to academic discourses about craft and design, ethics and responsible innovation, transdisciplinarity, and participation, this essay questions these assumptions and examines what kind of knowledge and practices are involved in art and technological innovation. It argues that technological innovation is indeed “technical”, but, if conceptualized as techne, can be understood as art and performance. It is argued that in practice, innovative techne is not only connected to episteme as theoretical knowledge but also has the mode of poiesis: it is not just the outcome of human design and intention but rather involves a performative process in which there is a “dialogue” between form and matter and between creator and environment in which humans and non-humans participate. Moreover, this art is embedded in broader cultural patterns and grammars—ultimately a ‘form of life’—that shape and make possible the innovation. In that sense, there is no gap between science and society—a gap that is often assumed in STS and in, for instance, discourse on responsible innovation. It is concluded that technology and art were only relatively recently and unfortunately divorced, conceptually, but that in practices and performances they were always linked. If we understand technological innovation as a poetic, participative, and performative process, then bringing together technological innovation and artistic practices should not be seen as a marginal or luxury project but instead as one that is central, necessary, and vital for cultural-technological change. This conceptualization supports not only a different approach to innovation but has also social-transformative potential and has implications for ethics of technology and responsible innovation

Physicality in Australian patent law

It is generally understood that the patent system exists to encourage the conception and disclosure of new and useful inventions embodied in machines and other physical devices, along with new methods that physically transform matter from one state to another. What is not well understood is whether, and to what extent, the patent system is to encourage and protect the conception and disclosure of inventions that are non-physical methods – namely those that do not result in a physical transformation of matter. This issue was considered in Grant v Commissioner of Patents. In that case the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held that an invention must involve a physical effect or transformation to be patentable subject matter. In doing so, it introduced a physicality requirement into Australian law. What this article seeks to establish is whether the court’s decision is consistent with the case law on point. It does so by examining the key common law cases that followed the High Court’s watershed decision in National Research Development Corporation v Commissioner of Patents, the undisputed authoritative statement of principle in regard to the patentable subject matter standard in Australia. This is done with a view to determining whether there is anything in those cases that supports the view that the Australian patentable subject matter test contains a physicality requirement

Kairotic Situations: A Spatial Rethinking of the Burkean Parlor in the Writing Center

The Burkean parlor has been integrated into the lore of writing centers, showcasing how writing centers have both conversational and collaborative elements. However, the ease for students to enter into the academic conversation is not as simple as this metaphor suggests. To rethink this concept, kairos, or the opportune moment, must be considered. This article will investigate kairos as spatial and how that conceptualization can deepen the Burkean parlor and the conversations within it. Breaking down the Burkean parlor into three stages—questions, metacognition, and choices—can benefit the practicality of the tutoring session. Kairos complicates each of these three points of the student writer’s integration into the conversation. The creation of kairos depends upon the student and tutor being mindful of these conscious and unconscious interactions and understanding how to most effectively disrupt the spatial boundaries of the tutoring session. Connecting kairos into the Burkean parlor metaphor differentiates the perspective of the tutoring session, encouraging both student and tutor to become more aware of the spatiality of tutoring and to redefine these boundaries.University Writing Cente