Commodity Supply and Extraterritorial Patent Infringement in Life Technologies V. Promega

American patent law grants inventors the exclusive right, within U.S. territory, to make, sell, use, and import their patented inventions. In response to attempts to circumvent the right by making the components of an invention within the U.S. and exporting them for assembly abroad, Congress passed 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), prohibiting “suppl[ying] . . . from the United States all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention . . . to actively induce the combination of such components outside of the United States . . . .” Petitioner Life Technologies supplied one commodity component of a patented five-component genetic testing kit from the U.S. The Federal Circuit held them liable under § 271(f), upholding a jury verdict and allowing that one component could be a “substantial portion of the components.” The Supreme Court reversed, reading § 271(f) not to reach the supply of a single component. This ruling will help to preserve suppliers’ confidence in their freedom to ship commodities overseas without being liable for infringement

Another Look at the Aesthetics of the Popular Arts

About twenty years ago, Abraham Kaplan delivered a lively and memorable paper to the American Philosophical Association on the aesthetics of the popular arts. Appearing during the heyday of formalist criticism of the arts in America, the clear condemnation of the popular arts in his opening paragraph surprised no one. But many things have happened in the last twenty years to make us want to rethink the casual identification of popular art with dis-value that Kaplan takes for granted: the rise in popularity of folk music, the transformation of rock and roll by the Beatle\u27s and others, the advent of poster art, the ever increasing sophistication of advertising, the power of television, the seriousness of film critics, the strong presence of modern dance, and full scale attempts (at least in the 60\u27s) at street theater and guerilla theater. Al l this, during the gradual eroding of the dominance of formalist criticism, ought to make us reevaluate popular art once more. Moreover, there is a special reason why professional educators should think carefully about popular art. To a significant degree, teachers transmit cultural tastes. If they have nothing to say about the art that a vast majority of students are already committed to, they will lose credibility in recommending the exploration of the so-called high arts. Although I am not advocating an acceptance of the position, it is clearly the case that for the majority of children through young adults, Springsteen, not Bach, is the boss

Moths of the Douglas Lake Region (Emmet and Cheboygan Counties), Michigan: II. Noctuidae (Lepidoptera)

(excerpt) The two counties which share the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Emmet on the west and Cheboygan on the east, have long been taken to define the principal region under study by the University of Michigan Biological Station, situated since 1909 on Douglas Lake in Cheboygan County near the Emmet County line

Moths of the Douglas Lake Region (Emmet and Cheboygan Counties), MIchigan: I. Sphingidae - Ctenuchidae (Lepidoptera)

Excerpt: For more than 60 years, workers at the University of Michigan Biological Station have been concerned with the flora and fauna of the Douglas Lake Region - now generally defined, for ease of boundaries. as Emmet and Cheboygan counties, which share the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. In 1915, Paul S. Welch published a list of Lepidoptera taken in the immediate vicinity of Douglas Lake, based on collections made from 19 1 1 to 19 13. The list includes 16 species in the families here considered (those before the Noctuidae in most checklists). A somewhat larger number of species, 55, were attributed to one (usually Cheboygan) or both of these counties in Moore\u27s list of the moths of Michigan (1955) -- a few of them credited solely on the basis of Welch\u27s list. 1 am now able to list 73 species in these families, all represented by extant specimens, and it seems well to assemble the information into compact form, as has been done for the butterflies (Voss. 1954, supplemented by Voss & Wagner, 1956). Additional species will certainly turn up in future years, in the field or in unexamined collections

Moths of the Douglas Lake Region (Emmet and Cheboygan Counties), Michigan: VI. Miscellaneous Small Families (Lepidoptera)

Forty-seven species in nine families of Lepidoptera (Hepialidae, Psychidae, Alucitidae, Sesiidae, Cossidae, Limacodidae, Thyrididae, Pterophoridae, Epiplemi- dae) are listed with earliest and latest recorded flight dates in Emmet and Cheboygan counties, which share the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The records are from the principal institutional and private collections of Michigan moths and continue the documented listing of Lepidoptera in the region

Moths of the Douglas Lake Region (Emmet and Cheboygan Counties), Michigan: IV. Geometridae (Lepidoptera)

An account, with known flight periods indicated, of 165 species of Geometridae concludes listing of the macrolepidoptera from the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. About 44OJo of these are previously unreported for the region, and 12 species are previously unreported for Michigan in earlier lists for the state