Limiting Downstream Effects of Patent Licensing Activity in Software and Electronics: An Argument for Alienability of Patent Licenses to Licensees\u27 Business Successors

Frustrating the ability to transfer ownership is costly, and non-creative entities (NCEs) may contribute to rising costs of innovation by contractually requiring their licensees to seek NCE consent to subsequent license transfers. One possible way of gradually limiting the reach of NCEs in this area is to expand the doctrine of patent misuse—which supports the unenforceability defense to patent infringement—to construe restraints on alienation of patent licenses as patent misuse. This narrowly tailored approach, discussed in this Note, minimizes the risk of negative impact on the patent system because it avoids the question of patent invalidity and does not seek to alter the ability of NCEs to procure patents

A Proposal for Eliminating Adjudicative Loopholes Under Statutory Law of Trade Secrets in the Seventh Circuit

Today, when 70% of business value is derived from intangible assets, and trade secret misappropriation (TSM) is the most frequently litigated form of intellectual property protection, it is critical to ensure that judicial remedies for misappropriation of intellectual property remain adequate without encouraging abusive litigation. With this goal in mind, in 1979, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws promulgated the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) in order to ensure a uniform and consistent treatment of trade secrets among the states. The Uniform Act displaced business torts claims that arise in common law, but only if those claims conflicted with the law of trade secrets. In its most recent decision interpreting the Illinois equivalent of the Uniform Act, Spitz v. Proven Winners, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, by upholding the district court\u27s dismissal of common-law claims on summary judgment, held that the plaintiff\u27s statutory claim of trade secret misappropriation displaced the plaintiff\u27s common-law claim of unjust enrichment even in the absence of a finding that the business information at issue amounted to a trade secret. As a result of this holding, TSM plaintiffs may be left without a common-law remedy if they plead, but do not adequately prove, statutory trade secret misappropriation-notwithstanding the fact that different elements are required for common-law tort claims. This Article promotes legal certainty by answering the following questions: (1) whether it is appropriate to dismiss common-law claims on summary judgment, and (2) whether all common-law claims should be displaced by claims of trade secret misappropriation or whether some should be allowed. The viability of any principled approach to answering these questions and avoiding adjudicative loopholes hinges on the definition of the statutory term “displace.” Typically, courts do not give a second thought to defining the term “displace,” but the UTSA and state statutes are silent on how this term should be construed, suggesting an expectation of judicial discretion. This Article posits that the statutory term “displace” should be construed as “preempt” (adjudicate first) rather than “preclude” (prohibit). As a necessary consequence of this interpretation, displacement of common-law claims should require adjudication of concurrently brought claims of trade secret misappropriation. This Article will demonstrate that otherwise TSM plaintiffs may, erroneously, be left without any remedy, which is not consistent with statutory intent

Limiting Downstream Effects of Patent Licensing Activity in Software and Electronics: An Argument for Alienability of Patent Licenses to Licensees\u27 Business Successors

Frustrating the ability to transfer ownership is costly, and non-creative entities (NCEs) may contribute to rising costs of innovation by contractually requiring their licensees to seek NCE consent to subsequent license transfers. One possible way of gradually limiting the reach of NCEs in this area is to expand the doctrine of patent misuse—which supports the unenforceability defense to patent infringement—to construe restraints on alienation of patent licenses as patent misuse. This narrowly tailored approach, discussed in this Note, minimizes the risk of negative impact on the patent system because it avoids the question of patent invalidity and does not seek to alter the ability of NCEs to procure patents

Complete Denitrification by the Non-Denitrifier \u3ci\u3eAnaeromyxobacter dehalogenans\u3c/i\u3e: The Role of Coupled Biotic-Abiotic Reactions

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance produced by many different pathways in the nitrogen cycle, including nitrification, denitrification, and chemodenitrification. Abiotic sources of N2O such as the chemical reaction between nitrite (NO2-) and ferrous ion (Fe[II]) are generally neglected in studies of N turnover in soils. Abiotic controls containing nitrate (NO3-) and ferric iron (Fe[III]) fail to capture potential reactions between intermediates of N cycle pathways (e.g., NO2- as an intermediate in NO3 - reduction to ammonium [NH4+] or nitrogen gas) or replenishment of reactants by iron cycling. Recent studies suggest that Fe(II) plays an important role in N turnover through combined biotic and abiotic reactions. Anaeromyxobacter dehalogenans strain 2CP-C is a common soil bacterium with a versatile metabolism, including microaerobic and anaerobic respiration. A. dehalogenans reduces Fe(III) to Fe(II) and reduces NO3- to NH4+ via respiratory ammonification. The present work investigates the mechanisms by which A. dehalogenans utilizes O2 and the synergistic effects of Fe(III) and NO3- reduction. Evidence for respiration of 21% O2 via a low-affinity cytochrome c oxidase is presented, further expanding the respiratory versatility of A. dehalogenans. A previously unrecognized ecophysiological role is revealed in which A. dehalogenans reduces NO3- to approximately 50% N2 and 50% NH4+ via coupled biotic-abiotic reactions, revealing a mechanism for denitrification in the absence of nitric oxide (NO)-forming NO2- reductases. Further analysis of publicly available sequenced genomes reveal other microorganisms with the potential to couple biotic-abiotic reactions for reduction of NO3- to N2 in the absence of NO-forming NO2- reductases. Finally, the effects of sulfide and molybdenum are tested, demonstrating that A. dehalogenans reduces NO3- to NH4+ and NO2- to N2O in the presence of Fe(II) and sulfide, due to the inhibition of NO3- and N2O reductases by sulfide sequestration of trace metals. Collectively, this work demonstrates an underestimated mechanism for denitrification and expands our knowledge of the role of A. dehalogenans in O2 respiration and Fe and N cycling. Future efforts assessing the fate of N in agricultural soils should take into account the iron, molybdenum, and sulfide content of soils in addition to molecular information

Optimum Multi-Impulse Rendezvous Program

OMIRPROGRAM determines optimal n-impulse rendezvous trajectories under the restrictions of two-body motion in free space. Lawden's primer vector theory is applied to determine optimum number of midcourse impulse applications. Global optimality is not guaranteed

A Proposal for Eliminating Adjudicative Loopholes Under Statutory Law of Trade Secrets in the Seventh Circuit

Today, when 70% of business value is derived from intangible assets, and trade secret misappropriation (TSM) is the most frequently litigated form of intellectual property protection, it is critical to ensure that judicial remedies for misappropriation of intellectual property remain adequate without encouraging abusive litigation. With this goal in mind, in 1979, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws promulgated the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) in order to ensure a uniform and consistent treatment of trade secrets among the states. The Uniform Act displaced business torts claims that arise in common law, but only if those claims conflicted with the law of trade secrets. In its most recent decision interpreting the Illinois equivalent of the Uniform Act, Spitz v. Proven Winners, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, by upholding the district court\u27s dismissal of common-law claims on summary judgment, held that the plaintiff\u27s statutory claim of trade secret misappropriation displaced the plaintiff\u27s common-law claim of unjust enrichment even in the absence of a finding that the business information at issue amounted to a trade secret. As a result of this holding, TSM plaintiffs may be left without a common-law remedy if they plead, but do not adequately prove, statutory trade secret misappropriation-notwithstanding the fact that different elements are required for common-law tort claims. This Article promotes legal certainty by answering the following questions: (1) whether it is appropriate to dismiss common-law claims on summary judgment, and (2) whether all common-law claims should be displaced by claims of trade secret misappropriation or whether some should be allowed. The viability of any principled approach to answering these questions and avoiding adjudicative loopholes hinges on the definition of the statutory term “displace.” Typically, courts do not give a second thought to defining the term “displace,” but the UTSA and state statutes are silent on how this term should be construed, suggesting an expectation of judicial discretion. This Article posits that the statutory term “displace” should be construed as “preempt” (adjudicate first) rather than “preclude” (prohibit). As a necessary consequence of this interpretation, displacement of common-law claims should require adjudication of concurrently brought claims of trade secret misappropriation. This Article will demonstrate that otherwise TSM plaintiffs may, erroneously, be left without any remedy, which is not consistent with statutory intent

Approximate treatment of electron Coulomb distortion in quasielastic (e,e') reactions

In this paper we address the adequacy of various approximate methods of including Coulomb distortion effects in (e,e') reactions by comparing to an exact treatment using Dirac-Coulomb distorted waves. In particular, we examine approximate methods and analyses of (e,e') reactions developed by Traini et al. using a high energy approximation of the distorted waves and phase shifts due to Lenz and Rosenfelder. This approximation has been used in the separation of longitudinal and transverse structure functions in a number of (e,e') experiments including the newly published 208Pb(e,e') data from Saclay. We find that the assumptions used by Traini and others are not valid for typical (e,e') experiments on medium and heavy nuclei, and hence the extracted structure functions based on this formalism are not reliable. We describe an improved approximation which is also based on the high energy approximation of Lenz and Rosenfelder and the analyses of Knoll and compare our results to the Saclay data. At each step of our analyses we compare our approximate results to the exact distorted wave results and can therefore quantify the errors made by our approximations. We find that for light nuclei, we can get an excellent treatment of Coulomb distortion effects on (e,e') reactions just by using a good approximation to the distorted waves, but for medium and heavy nuclei simple additional ad hoc factors need to be included. We describe an explicit procedure for using our approximate analyses to extract so-called longitudinal and transverse structure functions from (e,e') reactions in the quasielastic region.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 16 reference