The relevance of prior trade mark use in South African common law

The nature of the right protected by the law relating to unlawful competition is the right to goodwill, although the right to a distinctive mark, and the right to a trade secret can also feature. The existence of a general form of liability has been recognized by the courts. The interaction of reputation and goodwill was also considered. The current position is that it is only a reputation, and not also goodwill, that is required. Protection was granted in cases where a particular product was not yet on the market. The existence of an express intention to interfere with a rival’s marketing campaign has been held to amount to unlawful competition. If a descriptive mark is used, the risk that it may be used by a rival must be accepted. With regard to geographical disputes, the courts consider the particular area, and third parties that have used their marks elsewhere, cannot enter the area without further ado. In the situation where there is concurrent use by two parties, it was noted that both parties could be exercising their subjective rights to use their marks. With regard to the honesty of adoption, it was submitted that the doctrine of unclean hands should not apply. It was noted that the existence of a trade mark registration is not a defence to a passing off action. Lastly, as far as the right to use a mark is concerned, the position is that against other statutory proprietors, there is a limited right to use a mark, but not against a common law user

The relevance of prior trade mark use in the common law of the United Kingdom

In regard to the requirements for passing-off, a reputation is a necessary element. A goodwill in the country is required. With regard to the acquisition of rights, some decisions held that a business could be protected even prior to its commencement of trading. With regard to concurrent use, it can relate to a group of plaintiffs. Use of a mark by unrelated parties can have the effect that neither party can act against the other. Insofar as the honesty of the adoption of a mark is concerned, the position appears to be that it is possible to obtain protection, even though the plaintiff was aware of the use of the mark by another

Santam Limited v Dial Direct Limited and Joe Public (Pty) Ltd : unreported Western Cape High Court case number 13278/11 (WCC)

The dispute in Santam Limited v Dial Direct Limited and Joe Public (Pty) Ltd (unreported Western Cape High Court case number 13278/11), ended via a settlement, and judgment was given without any reasons being provided. Nevertheless, the facts raise a number of interesting questions, some of which are considered below. The facts were that Santam had a television advertisement produced (described in the court papers as “the Real McCoy” - available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JJWdpKATP0 (accessed 2011-12-10)). Sir Ben Kingsley is shown walking on the beach, talking about how consumers should discern between insurance companies, and in the end four look-alike men are shown. Dial Direct, a competitor of Santam, produced a commercial in response (available at http://www.alonberman.com/dial-directs-take-on-sanlams-ben-kingsley-ad (accessed 2011-12-10)). This commercial depicted an entity with a hand as the upper “body”, walking on a beach, saying “yada yada”’, and at the end four similar entities appear. The words “less yada yada, more ching ching” then appear on the screen. In the applicant’s founding affidavit the similarities were said to be, more in particular, that both advertisements had the same backdrop; the “persons” involved had the same dress style; the composition, grading and camera angles of the shots in the adverts are virtually identical; and similar music and lighting is used to create the same mood (par 24)

Continued study of NAVSTAR/GPS for general aviation

A conceptual approach for examining the full potential of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for the general aviation community is presented. Aspects of an experimental program to demonstrate these concepts are discussed. The report concludes with the observation that the true potential of GPS can only be exploited by utilization in concert with a data link. The capability afforded by the combination of position location and reporting stimulates the concept of GPS providing the auxiliary functions of collision avoidance, and approach and landing guidance. A series of general recommendations for future NASA and civil community efforts in order to continue to support GPS for general aviation are included

Preliminary study of NAVSTAR/GPS for general aviation

The activities conducted as a planning effort to focus attention on the applicability of the global positioning system for general aviation are described. The description of GPS, its impact on economic and functional aspects of general aviation avionics, as well as a declaration of potential extensions of the basic concept have been studied in detail

Bulletin 9

Extent of potato growing in Alaska -- Importance of early maturing varieties and sprouted seed -- Potato growing in different regions of Alaska -- Summary -- Literature cite

Effect of Salt Concentration on the Electrophoretic Speed of a Polyelectrolyte through a Nanopore

In a previous paper [S. Ghosal, Phys. Rev. E 74, 041901 (2006)] a hydrodynamic model for determining the electrophoretic speed of a polyelectrolyte through an axially symmetric slowly varying nanopore was presented in the limit of a vanishingly small Debye length. Here the case of a finite Debye layer thickness is considered while restricting the pore geometry to that of a cylinder of length much larger than the diameter. Further, the possibility of a uniform surface charge on the walls of the nanopore is taken into account. It is thereby shown that the calculated transit times are consistent with recent measurements in silicon nanopores.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Molecular Electroporation and the Transduction of Oligoarginines

Certain short polycations, such as TAT and polyarginine, rapidly pass through the plasma membranes of mammalian cells by an unknown mechanism called transduction as well as by endocytosis and macropinocytosis. These cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) promise to be medically useful when fused to biologically active peptides. I offer a simple model in which one or more CPPs and the phosphatidylserines of the inner leaflet form a kind of capacitor with a voltage in excess of 180 mV, high enough to create a molecular electropore. The model is consistent with an empirical upper limit on the cargo peptide of 40--60 amino acids and with experimental data on how the transduction of a polyarginine-fluorophore into mouse C2C12 myoblasts depends on the number of arginines in the CPP and on the CPP concentration. The model makes three testable predictions.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Quiescence: a mechanism for escaping the effects of drug on cell populations

We point out that a simple and generic strategy to lower the risk for extinction consists in the developing a dormant stage in which the organism is unable to multiply but may die. The dormant organism is protected against the poisonous environment. The result is to increase the survival probability of the entire population by introducing a type of zero reproductive fitness. This is possible, because the reservoir of dormant individuals act as a buffer that can cushion fatal fluctuations in the number of births and deaths which without the dormant population would have driven the entire population to extinction.Comment: 18 pages and 9 figure

Bubble statistics and positioning in superhelically stressed DNA

We present a general framework to study the thermodynamic denaturation of double-stranded DNA under superhelical stress. We report calculations of position- and size-dependent opening probabilities for bubbles along the sequence. Our results are obtained from transfer-matrix solutions of the Zimm-Bragg model for unconstrained DNA and of a self-consistent linearization of the Benham model for superhelical DNA. The numerical efficiency of our method allows for the analysis of entire genomes and of random sequences of corresponding length ($10^6-10^9$ base pairs). We show that, at physiological conditions, opening in superhelical DNA is strongly cooperative with average bubble sizes of $10^2-10^3$ base pairs (bp), and orders of magnitude higher than in unconstrained DNA. In heterogeneous sequences, the average degree of base-pair opening is self-averaging, while bubble localization and statistics are dominated by sequence disorder. Compared to random sequences with identical GC-content, genomic DNA has a significantly increased probability to open large bubbles under superhelical stress. These bubbles are frequently located directly upstream of transcription start sites.Comment: to be appeared in Physical Review