3,779 research outputs found
Mutating Marks: Refusing to Lose the Trademark Trail
This article examines and synthesizes several criticisms underlying the expansion of trademark rights, and the sometimes irrational results thereof. The abandonment of trademark law’s foundations, in particular categories of marks, is illustrated most saliently where marks have been allowed to encapsulate meaning and value in and of themselves, unattributable to any qualities or connections to product or source. This touches on, and bridges the gap, between areas which have received academic attention for their problematic evolutions, including naked licensing, strike suits, cultural and particularly sports-centric marks, and sensory marks. Trademark doctrines such as the consumer perception for confusion, and the spectrum of distinction, used to grant and organize marks, are discussed. This allows us to consider how to reinvigorate commitment to essential trademark jurisprudence.
The first Section reviews a few fundamental concepts underlying and organizing the trademark system, in order to explain where its boundaries belong. Sections II and III detail different considerations that emerged in step with the expansion of a trademark’s purpose far beyond that of a source signifier. They address matters, such as inherent goodwill, that have been largely ignored to the detriment of the public interest, and others, such as functionality, that have not been applied to their full, logical extent.
Section IV discusses the influence mark holders have had in shaping this progression—one of lowering requirements and escalating powers—and it considers the unreasonable consequences thereof. Finally, Section V indicates how courts and regulatory agencies may bring a significant portion of the trademarks, which have gone awry, back into the fold. Estoppel and a reconstituting of stronger evidentiary standards can help to ensure powerful mark holders seeking legal support for their market dominance actually meet high burdens to do so. The current trademark law framework leaves too much power in some mark holders’ hands, but it contains the seeds for innovative parties and lawyers to create more sensible trademark policies
Word-level Symbolic Trajectory Evaluation
Symbolic trajectory evaluation (STE) is a model checking technique that has
been successfully used to verify industrial designs. Existing implementations
of STE, however, reason at the level of bits, allowing signals to take values
in {0, 1, X}. This limits the amount of abstraction that can be achieved, and
presents inherent limitations to scaling. The main contribution of this paper
is to show how much more abstract lattices can be derived automatically from
RTL descriptions, and how a model checker for the general theory of STE
instantiated with such abstract lattices can be implemented in practice. This
gives us the first practical word-level STE engine, called STEWord. Experiments
on a set of designs similar to those used in industry show that STEWord scales
better than word-level BMC and also bit-level STE.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, full version of paper in International
Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV) 201
Envelope from Miss Baker containing letters from George C. Parkinson, C. W. Emerson, Emeline B. Wells, and Lou Lewis
Letters of recommendation for Mercy Rachel Baker
Evaluation of the ALMA Prototype Antennas
The ALMA North American and European prototype antennas have been evaluated
by a variety of measurement systems to quantify the major performance
specifications. Nearfield holography was used to set the reflector surfaces to
17 microns RMS. Pointing and fast switching performance was determined with an
optical telescope and by millimeter wavelength radiometry, yielding 2 arcsec
absolute and 0.6 arcsec offset pointing accuracies. Path length stability was
measured to be less than or approximately equal to 20 microns over 10 minute
time periods using optical measurement devices. Dynamical performance was
studied with a set of accelerometers, providing data on wind induced tracking
errors and structural deformation. Considering all measurements made during
this evaluation, both prototype antennas meet the major ALMA antenna
performance specifications.Comment: 83 pages, 36 figures, AASTex format, to appear in PASP September 2006
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Snow metamorphism: a fractal approach
Snow is a porous disordered medium consisting of air and three water phases:
ice, vapour and liquid. The ice phase consists of an assemblage of grains, ice
matrix, initially arranged over a random load bearing skeleton. The
quantitative relationship between density and morphological characteristics of
different snow microstructures is still an open issue. In this work, a
three-dimensional fractal description of density corresponding to different
snow microstructure is put forward. First, snow density is simulated in terms
of a generalized Menger sponge model. Then, a fully three-dimensional compact
stochastic fractal model is adopted. The latter approach yields a quantitative
map of the randomness of the snow texture, which is described as a
three-dimensional fractional Brownian field with the Hurst exponent H varying
as continuous parameter. The Hurst exponent is found to be strongly dependent
on snow morphology and density. The approach might be applied to all those
cases where the morphological evolution of snow cover or ice sheets should be
conveniently described at a quantitative level
Envelope from Miss Baker containing letters from Mercy Rachel Baker, C. W. Emerson, George C. Parkinson, Lou Lewis, and Emmeline B. Wells
Letters concerning a position in the English department at Utah Agricultural College as well as recommendations and testimonials
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