Demand Elasticities for Fresh Fruit at the Retail Level

The obesity epidemic in the US and elsewhere has re-doubled efforts to understand determinants of the quality of consumers' diets. Part of the discussion has centered on the potential of "fat taxes" and/or the subsidization of the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables to coax consumers to better diets. Whether this discussion has merit or not, fundamental to the debate are the demand elasticities of the commodities involved. This study employs weekly data from several retail stores on fruit prices and sales to estimate elasticities of individual fruits. Estimates show consumers are more responsive to price than has been found previously.Consumer/Household Economics,

In Brief

Book Review

Consistent Inconsistency: BASF v. SNF & the Licensing Exception to 35 U.S.C. § 102 (B)\u27s On-Sale Bar

In BASF Corp. v. SNF Holding Co., the Federal Circuit applied what is commonly referred to as a “licensing exception” to statutory prior art status. While the court describes the exception as a “well-established principle,” the licensing exception is less than twenty years old, formulated over the opposition of the USPTO, and has been disputed on several instances by Federal Circuit judges. Moreover, the existence of a licensing exception is a clear contradiction of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Pfaff v. Wells Electronics that a sale of an invention occurs when an intangible conception of that invention is first marketed commercially. This Note provides a case study of licensing practices in the chemical industry and argues that offering to sell licenses is a typical way in which intangibles such as process inventions are commercially marketed and put “on sale.” This Note further provides a history of legal thought on the licensing exception and submits the argument that the Federal Circuit’s rulings in In re Kollar and BASF arbitrarily discriminate between classes of invention and may contribute to greater levels of premature commercial exploitation. Finally, this Note concludes with the benefits of eliminating the licensing exception as it currently exists

Analysis of a high resolution deep ocean acoustic navigation system

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and for the degree of Master of Science in Ocean Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology January, 1975A high resolution acoustic navigation system for ocean use is being developed at the Woods Hole oceanographic Institution. The system can yield navigation fixes with respect to a bottom moored reference net with accuracies (on a fix to fix basis) of a few centimeters. In order to use the system to best advantage a survey is required to determine precisely the relative positions of the net elements. Each element combines a pulse transponder with a continuous wave (CW) beacon. Accumulated phase (Doppler shift of the CW beacon) between survey points is measured as well as acoustic travel times between survey points and transponders. Non-linear regression techniques are employed to develop a maximum likelihood estimator for net element positions based on these phase and travel time measurements. An approximate error covariance matrix is generated and an optimum choice of survey points is indicated., The combined system, using these selected locations for performing the survey, can yield reference mooring coordinates with error of ±1 meter. Improved precision appears to be limited by inaccuracies in the pulse and Doppler measuring system

The Supreme Court Fails to Decide the Inverse Condemnation Issue: MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. Yolo County

The purpose of this Article is to review and organize the current law of inverse condemnation in light of MacDonald. First this Article briefly reviews the origin of inverse condemnation and the tangled web woven by the Court in Agins, San Diego Gas, and Hamilton Bank. Second, the Article reviews MacDonald and the state of the law after MacDonald. Finally, the Article provides some insight into what action can be expected from the Court on inverse condemnation and finishes with some practical considerations for current land use disputes