Women’s Open Space project evaluation: final report

This report presents findings from an evaluation of the Women's Open Spaces [WOS] project, carried out between July 2011 and March 2012. The evaluation sought to analyze the impact and efficacy of services offered to street-based sex workers by WOS and to look at the New Horizon Youth Centre [NHYC] model of engagement with young women at risk of sexual exploitation. This report will provide an analysis of service delivery and user-engagement with WOS and NHYC, and will highlight areas of best practice in engaging with street-based sex workers and with young women at risk of sexual exploitation

Preventing domestic violence and abuse: common themes and lessons learned from West Midlands' DHRs

This report is the result of a piece of commissioned research looking at Domestic Homicide Reviews in the West Midlands Police Force Area. Domestic Homicide Reviews were introduced in April 2011 with the aim of allowing and encouraging local areas to work together following a domestic homicide in order to focus on: future prevention, provision of relevant services, partnership and interagency working, justice outcomes, and risk reduction. Noting the lessons emanating from the Home Office (2013b) report looking at the usefulness of DHRs, the seven Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) across the West Midlands Police Force Area (WMPFA) believed there to be tangible benefits of understanding where the nationally identified themes are present across the WMPFA, and where a potential alteration of policy and practice across the region in response could identify domestic violence victims and reduce their vulnerability. As such, this report was commissioned by the seven CPGs across the WMPFA, and has been funded by the Police & Crime Commissioner. This report builds on the findings of the Home Office report (2013b) and the HMIC recommendations (HMIC, 2014) and tailors recommendations for the WMPFA with regards to strategies for tackling domestic violence, and specifically for addressing issues that may lead to domestic violence homicide

Standard Essential Patents and the Internet of Things

This in-depth analysis, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the JURI Committee, assesses the European Commission of (EC) Communication of 29 November 2017 on the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents. The report examines the principles identified in the Communication with respect to the Commission’s proposals on (i) increasing transparency on SEPs; (ii) determining valuation of SEPs( Standard Essential Patents) and FRAND ( Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) terms; and (iii) enforcement. The report evaluates the efficient resolution of licensing disputes over FRAND, including via litigation, arbitration and mediation, licensing pools and collective licensing. The current document also puts forward some policy recommendations to, inter alia, enhance the general environment of FRAND licencing in the context of SEPs

Evaluation of the Community Group Programme for Children & Young People: final report

The report presents findings from the evaluation of the Community Group Programme (CGP). The CGP is a 12-week psycho-educational, group work programme for children and young people who have experienced domestic violence. The Programme was developed in Canada and is being rolled out in England for the first time across 32 London boroughs. The programme is unique in working with children and their mothers concurrently and in a child-focused way. The study takes a theory-driven approach to evaluation. We employ a mixed method research strategy to answer questions of process (how does the CGP work?), impact (does the CGP make a difference and, if so, what sort of difference), salience (does the CGP matter to children and mothers and if so, in what ways?) and cost (what is the cost of CGP?). The final report presents findings from questionnaires, interviews and focus groups with children, mothers and professionals

Intellectual Property Aspects of the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement

The Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (JEPA) was signed on 1th July 2018 and entered into force on 1st February 2019, with Chapter 14 focusing on intellectual property (IP) rights. JEPA should be hailed as a positive contribution to strengthening IP protection in the two blocs, and therefore further promoting trade and reciprocal investments

When to Leave the Stones Unturned: Using Proportionality to Navigate Discovery Efficiently, Effectively, and Ethically

Discovery is intended to be an efficient, truth-seeking process with the ultimate goal of achieving just, speedy, and inexpensive dispute resolution. However, the consistent and extensive abuse of discovery has cast a shadow on the intended purpose of the process. For various ill- and well-intentioned reasons, attorneys abuse the process by conducting unnecessarily excessive and expensive discovery. One such reason for excessive and expensive discovery—and the focus of this Article—is the over-zealous advocacy of attorneys who leave no stone unturned out of fear of legal malpractice claims. To combat such excessive and expensive discovery, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure emphasize a proportionality principle to limit the scope of discovery. But, despite the many revisions and amendments, the practicalities of the proportionality principle still remain ambiguous. In an attempt to resolve ambiguity, this Article offers realistic methods attorneys can implement to achieve proportionality in discovery, such as early case assessments, fact-finder assessments, written agreements with clients, and early judicial involvement. Furthermore, this Article proposes an ethical safeharbor to be added to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to protect well-intentioned attorneys who utilize the suggested proportionality methods. With these suggested proportionality methods and the proposed safe-harbor, this Article endeavors to curtail discovery abuse, protect attorneys, and allow for greater access to affordable and attainable justice

Report on the TRILATTRADE Project: Trade regulation & IP Post-Brexit

TRILATTRADE examines three thematic strands in UK-EU-Japan relations going forward: overall economic law; regulation theory and data transfers; and IP law and policy. The ESRC-funded TRILATTRADE research project seeks to model the legal framework of the trilateral UK-EU-Japan Trade, Regulation and IP relationship. Trade, regulation and IP constitute three core pillars of international, national and regional economic law and policy frameworks. This is relevant to the functional operation of trade and its innovation. The project addresses these core pillars with three interlocking thematic strands: 1. UK-Japan Trade; 2. UK-EU-Japan Regulatory Cooperation and Data Flows; and 3. UK-EU-Japan Intellectual Property. The project aims to generate trade and business opportunities as well as models for good global governance in law and policy as a future research agenda

Surface atmospheric forcing as the driver of long-term pathways and timescales of ocean ventilation

The ocean takes up 93 % of the excess heat in the climate system and approximately a quarter of the anthropogenic carbon via air–sea fluxes. Ocean ventilation and subduction are key processes that regulate the transport of water (and associated properties) from the surface mixed layer, which is in contact with the atmosphere, to the ocean's interior, which is isolated from the atmosphere for a timescale set by the large-scale circulation. Utilising numerical simulations with an ocean–sea-ice model using the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) framework, we assess where the ocean subducts water and, thus, takes up properties from the atmosphere; how ocean currents transport and redistribute these properties over time; and how, where, and when these properties are ventilated. Here, the strength and patterns of the net uptake of water and associated properties are analysed by including simulated seawater vintage dyes that are passive tracers released annually into the ocean surface layers between 1958 and 2017. The dyes' distribution is shown to capture years of strong and weak convection at deep and mode water formation sites in both hemispheres, especially when compared to observations in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre. Using this approach, relevant to any passive tracer in the ocean, we can evaluate the regional and depth distribution of the tracers, and determine their variability on interannual to multidecadal timescales. We highlight the key role of variations in the subduction rate driven by changes in surface atmospheric forcing in setting the different sizes of the long-term inventory of the dyes released in different years and the evolution of their distribution. This suggests forecasting potential for determining how the distribution of passive tracers will evolve, from having prior knowledge of mixed-layer properties, with implications for the uptake and storage of anthropogenic heat and carbon in the ocean