Pushing Ahead With the Pro Bono Assistance Program, 12 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 286 (2013)

Lawyers often contribute their time and energy helping the under-resourced through pro bono work, whether because it’s required of them or because of a personal desire to assist those less fortunate. But until 2011, few, if any programs were available for IP Professionals to volunteer their time for patent legal services, leaving them to contribute to areas of law outside their expertise. A group of IP law experts from LegalCORPS and a pro bono program created by the America Invents Act (AIA) has changed that. In this brief Article, John Calvert, author of the AIA provision that created the USPTO Pro Bono Assistance Program, discusses the creation of this new program, its successes, and goals for the immediate future. He also explains how IP Professionals can get involved with this exciting new opportunity to help those under-resourced

Pensions and Public-Private Partnerships: A Cautionary Note for Union Trustees

A major demand of public sector unions in recent years has been for greater control over their members’ pension plans. Recently, several provincial governments, most notably British Columbia, have agreed to joint trusteeship, a development which gives union trustees a voice in investment policy.This article focuses on the implications for union trustees of investments in Public Private Partnerships (P-3s) and related privatization initiatives. Examples of such investments include: transportation infrastructure projects, hospitals and health services, schools, municipal water and sewer systems, electrical utilities, and other projects that, historically, have been within the public sector.It argues that trustees should be wary of such investments. Public sector unions have criticized privatization initiatives as a threat to public sector jobs and services. P-3 investments are problematic because they may threaten the jobs of their union’s members, undermine the credibility of their union’s public policy objections to privatization and, in the end, may prove far more risky than P-3 promoters contend

Authority and democracy in industry: the relevance of theories of industrial democracy to contemporary industrial organizations

It is commonly assumed that contemporary industrial organizations are structured according to the dictates of technology, size, expertize and administrative needs and hence that property no longer plays a major role in determining either the priorities of industry or the way in which industrial undertakings are organized. The purpose of this thesis is to challenge this assumption and to argue that despite the numerous technical advances of the past century, workers’ control remains a viable and desirable alternative to the present system. The first part of the thesis analyzes the development of management in the West from F.W. Taylor to the present and concludes, first, that managers are agents of shareholders, not independent professionals and, second, that the subordination of industry to property has led to a systematic exclusion of workers from the decision making process.to ensure that they do not obstruct the pursuit of shareholders’ objectives. Thus the circumscribed role that workers now play in industry is primarily a result of the constraints of ownership, not industrialization. In the second part of the thesis the consequences of excluding workers from industrial decision making are examined. Contrary to the fashionable assumption that the consumer benefits arising from industry’s present emphasis on efficiency and productivity outweigh any losses incurred by workers as a result of their subordination to property, it is argued that such costs are exceedingly high. Methods of production which maximize output frequently involve major risks to the physical health and safety of workers and pose a threat to their psychological well-being. But, more significantly, the possibility of utilizing work as an avenue for creativity and self-development is effectively stifled because the owners who control industry have no interest in such objectives. The third, part of the thesis looks at the effectiveness of the collective bargaining approach to industrial democracy, as outlined by the Webbs and Hugh Clegg, in redressing the abuses of private ownership. It concludes that because collective bargaining accepts the subordination of workers to property, it fails to protect their rights and interests adequately. Consequently, a more radical approach is called for. Thus, in the final part of the thesis, we turn to examine R.H. Tawney’s proposals for the démocratisation of industry. Tawney’s arguments that industry could be founded upon the principles of co-operation and fellowship rather than hierarchy and subordination, vie maintain, are no less relevant today than when he first advanced them half a century ago. As the Yugoslav experiment in workers’ management demonstrates, the idea of workers' control constitutes a perfectly feasible - and desirable - basis upon which to manage a modem economy

Creditor\u27s Rights—Bankruptcy—Section 70(c)—Actual Creditor Required

In Pacific Finance Corp. v. Edwards the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit interpreted § 70(c) of the Bankruptcy Act to mean that the trustee acquires the status of a hypothetical lien creditor only if there is an actual creditor who could have acquired a lien on the date of the petition in bankruptcy