Are Biotech Crops and Conventional Crops Like Products? An Analysis Under GATT

The transatlantic debate over the use of genetically modified organisms ( GMO s) as food products, with the US as a proponent on one side, and the European Union ( EU ) as an opponent on the other, is set to take center stage. The US has initiated formal legal action under the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement System, charging that the EU violates several agreements of international trade law, including Article III of GATT, an anti-protectionist measure which forbids a country from favoring its own products over imported like products. The US claims that GMOs and conventional crops are like products,, and that the EU moratorium on GMOs thus violates Article III. This iBrief assesses the US like products claim, most notably in light of Asbestos, a recent WTO case which provides important guidance for determining likeness under four criteria

Harmonization Without Consensus: Critical Reflections on Drafting a Substantive Patent Law Treaty

In this Article, we contend that the World Intellectual Property Organization\u27s proposed Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) is premature. Developing countries are struggling to adjust to the heightened standards of intellectual property protection required by the TRIPS Agreement of 1994. With TRIPS, at least, these countries obtained side payments (in the form of trade concessions) to offset the rising costs of knowledge products. A free-standing instrument, such as the SPLT, would shrink the remaining flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement with no side payments and no concessions to the catch-up strategies of developing countries at different stages of technological advancement. More controversially, we argue that a deep harmonization would boomerang against even its developed country promoters by creating more problems than it would solve. There is no vision of a properly functioning patent system for the developed world that commands even the appearance of a consensus. The evidence shows, instead, that the worldwide intellectual property system has entered a brave new scientific epoch, in which experts have only tentative, divergent ideas about how best to treat a daunting array of new technologies. The proposals for reconciling the needs of different sectors, such as information technology and biotechnology, pose hard, unresolved issues at a time when the costs of litigation are rising at the expense of profits from innovation. These difficulties are compounded by the tendency of universities to push patenting up stream, generating new rights to core methodologies and research tools. As new approaches to new technologies emerge in different jurisdictions, there is a need to gather empirical evidence to determine which, if any, of these still experimental solutions are preferable over time. Our argument need not foreclose other less intrusive options and measures surveyed in the Article that can reduce the costs of delaying harmonization. However, the international community should not rush to freeze legal obligations regarding the protection of intellectual property. It should wait until economists and policymakers better understand the dynamics of innovation and the role that patent rights play in promoting progress and until there are mechanisms in place to keep international obligations responsive to developments in science, technology, and the organization of the creative community

Input estimation with application to speech coding

Dans ce papier une méthode pour l'estimation de l'entrée (ou déconvolution) est présentée. La méthode est basée principalement sur l'utilisation d'une certaine paramétrization du modèle du signal d'entrée. Pour utiliser cette méthode, nous devons être capable d'exprimer le signal d'entrée en fonction de quelques paramètres inconnues et du temps. L'algorithme est conçu pour estimer, simultanément, les paramètres du signal d'entrée et ceux de la fonction de transfert du système. On se limite à l'étude des systèmes dont la fonction de transfert ne comportant que des pôles (c.à.d modèles ARX). La méthode peut être étendue pour consider aussi les zéros de la fonction de transfert. Il est évident que ceci entraîne une augmentation de la charge numérique. L'algorithme est basé sur des méthodes numériques efficaces comme par exemple la factorisation QR utilisant les transformations de Householder. L'application d'un tel algorithme au codage de la parole est présentée. It est à noter que la qualité du signal synthétisé de la parole, peut être nettement améliorée si un modèle plus détaillé est utilisé pour décrire, le modèle du mouvement des cordes vocal plutôt qu'un train d'impulsion. On montre aussi que la méthode envisagée peut être utilisée pour estimer les paramètres du système vocales et ceux du modèle du mouvement des cordes vocales simultanément

Three Techniques for State Order Estimation of Hidden Markov Models

In this contribution three examples of techniques that can be used for state order estimation of hidden Markov models are given The methods are also exem plied using real laser range data and the computa tional burden of the three methods is discussed Two techniques Maximum Description Length and Maximum a Posteriori Estimate are shown to be very sim ilar under certain circumstances The third technique Predictive Least Squares is novel in this contex

Computer Supported Control Education from a Linköping Perspective

The development of computer supported control education at Linköping University is presented. A review of the different phases of development of computer support is given. The experiences from the introduction of computer supported exams are discussed

Computer Supported Control Education from a Linköping Perspective

The development of computer supported control education at Linköping University is presented. A review of the different phases of development of computer support is given. The experiences from the introduction of computer supported exams are discussed

Ground Target Recognition using Rectangle Estimation

We propose a ground target recognition method based on 3-D laser radar data. The method handles general 3-D scattered data. It is based on the fact that man-made objects of complex shape can be decomposed to a set of rectangles. The ground target recognition method consists of four steps; 3-D size and orientation estimation, target segmentation into parts of approximately rectangular shape, identification of segments that represent the target's functional/main parts, and target matching with CAD models. The core in this approach is rectangle estimation. The performance of the rectangle estimation method is evaluated statistically using Monte Carlo simulations. A case study on tank recognition is shown, where 3-D data from four fundamentally different types of laser radar systems are used. Although the approach is tested on rather few examples, we believe that the approach is promising

Ground Target Recognition using Rectangle Estimation

We propose a ground target recognition method based on 3-D laser radar data. The method handles general 3-D scattered data. It is based on the fact that man-made objects of complex shape can be decomposed to a set of rectangles. The ground target recognition method consists of four steps; 3-D size and orientation estimation, target segmentation into parts of approximately rectangular shape, identification of segments that represent the target's functional/main parts, and target matching with CAD models. The core in this approach is rectangle estimation. The performance of the rectangle estimation method is evaluated statistically using Monte Carlo simulations. A case study on tank recognition is shown, where 3-D data from four fundamentally different types of laser radar systems are used. Although the approach is tested on rather few examples, we believe that the approach is promising

Ground Target Recognition using Rectangle Estimation

We propose a ground target recognition method based on 3-D laser radar data. The method handles general 3-D scattered data. It is based on the fact that man-made objects of complex shape can be decomposed to a set of rectangles. The ground target recognition method consists of four steps; 3-D size and orientation estimation, target segmentation into parts of approximately rectangular shape, identification of segments that represent the target's functional/main parts, and target matching with CAD models. The core in this approach is rectangle estimation. The performance of the rectangle estimation method is evaluated statistically using Monte Carlo simulations. A case study on tank recognition is shown, where 3-D data from four fundamentally different types of laser radar systems are used. Although the approach is tested on rather few examples, we believe that the approach is promising

Segmentation of Laser Range Images with Respect to Range and Variance

Segmentation is a first step towards successful tracking and object recognition in 2-D pictures. Mostly the pictures are segmented with respect to quantities as range, intensity etc. Here a method is presented for segmentation of 2-D laser range pictures with respect to both range and variance simultaneously. This is very useful since man-made objects differ from the background in the terrain by their smoothness. The approach is based on modeling horizontal scans of the terrain as piecewise constant functions. Since the environment has a complicated and irregular structure we use multiple models for modeling different segments in the laser range image. The switching between different models, i.e., ranges belonging to different segments in a horizontal scan, are modeled by a hidden Markov model. The method is of relatively low computational complexity and the maximal complexity can be controlled by the user. Real data is used for illustration of the method