Bankruptcy Treatment of Intellectual Property Assets: An Economic Analysis

With the rise of intellectual property in the modern economy, bankruptcy treatment of intellectual property assets has taken on ever greater importance. The law in this area must balance different approaches to asset management. Viewing the world from an ex ante perspective, intellectual property laws seek to foster investment in research and development. Freedom of contract plays a central role in maximizing the potential value of intellectual property by encouraging a robust licensing market to exploit the value of intellectual creativity. By contrast, the bankruptcy system generally views asset management from an ex post standpoint, focusing narrowly on how to maximize the value of a failing or failed enterprise. Thus, bankruptcy law affords trustees and debtors substantial leeway to rescind contracts and reorder the affairs of the failed entity. This article examines the rather complex rules governing the treatment of intellectual property assets in bankruptcy and suggests various reforms that could better promote economic efficiency

Rodent sleep lab installation and development

SRI International's Pharmaceutical Discovery Division has developed an in vivo sleep research laboratory headed by Dr. Thomas Kilduff, which will investigate various neurobiological and physiological aspects of sleep/wake trends and cycles. Our team assisted in this lab's installation and created a file manager software program that provides compatibility and data translation for the data acquisition and post-processing programs used in this lab. Our team also outlined a primary design for the development of an improved automated sleep-scoring program