Can a Court Change the Law by Saying Nothing?

Can an appellate court alter substantive law without writing an opinion? We attempt to answer that question by conducting a novel empirical investigation into how the Federal Circuit has implemented the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, the most recent in a series of Supreme Court decisions strengthening patent law’s patentable subject matter requirement. Our dataset includes each one of the Federal Circuit’s more than 100 decisions on patentable subject matter in the three years since Alice, including affirmances issued without an opinion under Federal Circuit Rule 36. Including those no-opinion affirmances, the Federal Circuit has found the patent to be invalid in more than ninety percent of its decisions. The court’s precedential opinions, however, tell a different story: nearly a quarter of them favor the patentee by rejecting challenges to patent validity. This difference is due largely to one remarkable fact: Although the court has issued over fifty Rule 36 affirmances finding the asserted patent to be invalid, it has not issued a single Rule 36 affirmance when finding in favor of a patentee. Rather, it has written an opinion in every one of those cases. As a result, the Federal Circuit’s precedential opinions provide an inaccurate picture of how disputes over patentable subject matter are actually resolved. Those opinions suggest that any given patent has a decent chance of surviving an eligibility challenge at the Federal Circuit. But, in reality, very few patents do. Our findings suggest that, by saying nothing, a court can indeed affect substantive law, or at least the perception of it. This has interesting implications both for the on-going debate over the legality of Rule 36 and, more broadly, for understanding the differences between the law on the books and the actual experience of litigants

Seed germination of Thymus richardii subsp. nitidus (Lamiaceae)

The germination ability of the punctual endemic Thymus richardii subsp. nitidus (Lamiaceae) from the Island of Marettimo in W Sicily was studied. Mature seeds were collected in the field. Different experimental conditions were tested and the best methods with optimal germination results were provided. This is the first germination record for this taxon

Can a Court Change the Law by Saying Nothing?

Can an appellate court alter substantive law without writing an opinion? We attempt to answer that question by conducting a novel empirical investigation into how the Federal Circuit has implemented the Supreme Court\u27s 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, the most recent in a series of Supreme Court decisions strengthening patent law\u27s patentable subject matter requirement. Our dataset includes each one of the Federal Circuit\u27s more than 100 decisions on patentable subject matter in the three years since Alice, including affirmances issued without an opinion under Federal Circuit Rule 36. Including those no-opinion affirmances, the Federal Circuit has found the patent to be invalid in more than 90% of its decisions. The court\u27s precedential opinions, however, tell a different story: nearly a quarter of them favor the patentee by rejecting challenges to patent validity. This difference is due largely to one remarkable fact: although the court has issued over fifty Rule 36 affirmances finding the asserted patent to be invalid, it has not issued a single Rule 36 affirmance when finding in favor of a patentee. Rather, it has written an opinion in every one of those cases. As a result, the Federal Circuit\u27s precedential opinions provide an inaccurate picture of how disputes over patentable subject matter are actually resolved. Precedential opinions suggest that any given patent has a decent chance of surviving an eligibility challenge at the Federal Circuit. But, in reality, very few patents do. Our findings suggest that, by saying nothing, a court can indeed affect substantive law, or at least the perception of it. This has interesting implications both for the ongoing debate over the legality of Rule 36 and, more broadly, for understanding the differences between the law on the books and the actual experience of litigant

Destabilization and removal of immobilized enzymes adsorbed onto polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membranes by salt solutions

In this work the effectiveness of two saline solutions (NaCl and Na2SO4) to clean a permanently hydrophilic polyethersulfone (PESH) ultrafiltration (UF) membrane with a molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) of 30 kDa previously fouled with enzymatic solutions was investigated. The influence of protein concentration in the enzymatic solution during the fouling step and the effect of salt type during the cleaning procedure were studied. The protein aggregation was analyzed in solution and onto the membrane surface by using several techniques including Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Infrared Spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR-FTIR). In addition, mechanisms that dominate membrane fouling were studied by fitting some mathematical models (Hermia's models adapted to crossflow filtration, a combined model based on the complete blocking and cake formation equations and a resistance-in-series model) to the experimental data. Fouling results showed that the complete blocking/adsorption on membrane surface was the predominant fouling mechanism. Regarding the cleaning results, higher cleaning efficiency and low residual protein concentration was obtained with NaCl solutions for all the feed solutions tested due to the favorable interaction between Cl and proteins.Maria-Jose Corbaton-Baguena wishes to gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the grant EEBB-I-14-09011 (project CTM2010-20186). The authors acknowledge the European Union, Fondo Europeo di Sviluppo Regionale, The Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca - MIUR, The Ministero dello Svilupppo Economic - MSE - for the financial support to the project "Sistemi tecnologici avanzati e processi integrati della filiera olivicola per la valorizzazione dei prodotti e dei sottoprodotti, lo sviluppo di nuovi settori e la creazione di sistemi produttivi Eco-compatibili" (PON Olio Piu, PON01_01545), within the framework PON Ricerca e Competitivita 2007-2013.Corbatón Báguena, MJ.; Gugliuzza, A.; Cassano, A.; Mazzei, R.; Giorno, L. (2015). Destabilization and removal of immobilized enzymes adsorbed onto polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membranes by salt solutions. Journal of Membrane Science. 486:207-214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2015.03.061S20721448

Image Content Enhancement Through Salient Regions Segmentation for People With Color Vision Deficiencies

Color vision deficiencies affect visual perception of colors and, more generally, color images. Several sciences such as genetics, biology, medicine, and computer vision are involved in studying and analyzing vision deficiencies. As we know from visual saliency findings, human visual system tends to fix some specific points and regions of the image in the first seconds of observation summing up the most important and meaningful parts of the scene. In this article, we provide some studies about human visual system behavior differences between normal and color vision-deficient visual systems. We eye-tracked the human fixations in first 3 seconds of observation of color images to build real fixation point maps. One of our contributions is to detect the main differences between the aforementioned human visual systems related to color vision deficiencies by analyzing real fixation maps among people with and without color vision deficiencies. Another contribution is to provide a method to enhance color regions of the image by using a detailed color mapping of the segmented salient regions of the given image. The segmentation is performed by using the difference between the original input image and the corresponding color blind altered image. A second eye-tracking of color blind people with the images enhanced by using recoloring of segmented salient regions reveals that the real fixation points are then more coherent (up to 10%) with the normal visual system. The eye-tracking data collected during our experiments are in a publicly available dataset called Eye-Tracking of Color Vision Deficiencies

Can a Court Change the Law by Saying Nothing?

Can an appellate court alter substantive law without writing an opinion? We attempt to answer that question by conducting a novel empirical investigation into how the Federal Circuit has implemented the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, the most recent in a series of Supreme Court decisions strengthening patent law’s patentable subject matter requirement. Our dataset includes each one of the Federal Circuit’s more than 100 decisions on patentable subject matter in the three years since Alice, including affirmances issued without an opinion under Federal Circuit Rule 36. Including those no-opinion affirmances, the Federal Circuit has found the patent to be invalid in more than ninety percent of its decisions. The court’s precedential opinions, however, tell a different story: nearly a quarter of them favor the patentee by rejecting challenges to patent validity. This difference is due largely to one remarkable fact: Although the court has issued over fifty Rule 36 affirmances finding the asserted patent to be invalid, it has not issued a single Rule 36 affirmance when finding in favor of a patentee. Rather, it has written an opinion in every one of those cases. As a result, the Federal Circuit’s precedential opinions provide an inaccurate picture of how disputes over patentable subject matter are actually resolved. Those opinions suggest that any given patent has a decent chance of surviving an eligibility challenge at the Federal Circuit. But, in reality, very few patents do. Our findings suggest that, by saying nothing, a court can indeed affect substantive law, or at least the perception of it. This has interesting implications both for the on-going debate over the legality of Rule 36 and, more broadly, for understanding the differences between the law on the books and the actual experience of litigants

Water retention characteristics of substrates containing biochar and compost as peat and perlite replacements for ornamental plant production

In Italy peat and perlite are commonly used as growth substrates in ornamental plant nurseries. Requests for ecologically sustainable growth substrates have recently focused research on the study of new media. In this context, biochar and compost, by-products of other production chains, may play a relevant role. Four growth substrates were prepared by mixing (v/v) different porous matrices including a 2-mm sieved sandy loam soil namely: 50% peat and 50% perlite (PPr), 50% compost and 50% biochar (CB), 25% peat, 25% perlite, 25% compost and 25% biochar (PPrCB) and 25% peat, 25% compost and 50% mineral soil (PCM). Water retention curves of porous matrices and growth substrates were determined by standard techniques and the unimodal and bimodal van Genuchten models were fitted to experimental data. The three growth substrates obtained by mixing by-products (CB, PPrCB and PCM) were tested for Lantana camara L. production in a three-months trial performed on 3 L pot plants. The highest plant available water content (PAWC) was obtained for biochar (PAWC = 0.28 cm3 cm-3), while the highest saturated volumetric water content (θs) was obtained for peat (θs = 0.67 cm3 cm-3). Perlite and biochar water retention curves showed a steep decrease in volumetric water content when desaturated probably due to the high macroporosity of the media. The PPr showed higher water retention performances than CB growth substrate. Despite the differences in water retention characteristics, Lantana camara above ground and total plant dry weight were not affected by the growth substrates