Who’s Afraid of the APA? What the Patent System Can Learn From Administrative Law

In recent years, widespread dissatisfaction with the perceived poor quality of issued patents has spurred a diverse range of groups to call for reform of administrative procedures. Strikingly, however, most calls for reform pay little attention to principles of administrative law. Similarly, judges (in particular the judges of the Federal Circuit) have treated patent law as an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act, and to administrative law more generally. In this Article, Professors Benjamin and Rai contend that this treatment is doctrinally incorrect and normatively undesirable. Standard principles of administrative law provide the appropriate approach for judicial review in the current system of patent grants and denials. As for proposed reforms, such as the institution of post-grant opposition proceedings, an administrative approach to judicial review is the best mechanism for addressing the collective action/public good problems that inevitably arise in challenges to patent validity. Finally, an administrative approach provides the doctrinally appropriate and normatively desirable institutional foundation for the determinations of economic policy that the patent system should be making

Structuring U.S. Innovation Policy: Creating a White House Office of Innovation Policy

This article begins with a discussion of innovation’s importance to the future well-being of American society. The authors then discuss limitations of the current federal framework for making innovation policy. Specifically, the relative absence of innovation from the agenda of Congress and many relevant federal agencies manifests the confluence of two regulatory challenges: first, the tendency of political actors to focus on short-term goals and consequences; and second, political actors’ reluctance to threaten powerful incumbent actors. Courts, meanwhile, lack sufficient expertise and the ability to conduct the type of forward-looking policy planning that should be a hallmark of innovation policy. Ultimately, their analysis leads to a proposal that President Obama (or Congress, if Congress is willing) create a White House OIP that would have the specific mission of being the “innovation champion” within these processes. The authors envision OIP as an entity that would be independent of existing federal agencies and that would have more than mere hortatory influence. It would have some authority to push agencies to act in a manner that either affirmatively promoted innovation or achieved a particular regulatory objective in a manner least damaging to innovation. We also envision OIP as an entity that would operate efficiently by drawing upon, and feeding into, existing interagency processes within OIRA and other relevant White House offices (e.g., the Office of Science and Technology Policy)

Fixing Innovation Policy: A Structural Perspective

Innovation is central to economic growth and human welfare. Government officials and commentators have recognized this reality and have called for a variety of different substantive incentives for stimulating innovation. But the question of how an innovation regulator should be structured has received little attention. Such consideration is important not only because of the significance of innovation but also because current government innovation policy is so haphazard. There is no government entity that looks at innovation broadly, and the narrower agencies that regulate aspects of innovation policy not only fail to pay systematic attention to innovation goals but often act at cross-purposes with each other. In this article, Professors Benjamin and Rai analyze how government policy on innovation should be structured. Drawing on existing theoretical and empirical work, as well as their own original empirical research, they propose the creation of an entity in the executive branch that would both analyze pending agency action and offer regulatory suggestions of its own. This entity would introduce a new, trans-agency focus on innovation while drawing upon, and feeding into, existing executive branch processes that aim to rationalize the work of disparate federal agencies. This approach, Professors Benjamin and Rai contend, offers a great improvement over existing government institutions while avoiding a costly (and politically infeasible) remaking of the administrative state

A new spectrophotometric method for the determination of Baygon in environment and biological samples

A sensitive, selective, cheaper and extractive spectrophotometeric method has been developed for the detection and determination of Baygon in fruits, vegetables, and grains is based on the coupling of their hydrolysation products with diazotized aniline. The dyes formed are measured at 450nm for Baygon after extraction in chloroform. Beer’s law is obeyed over concentration ranges of 0.8-5.0µg. The Molar absorptivity and Sandell’s sensitivity were found to be 9.7×105 L mol-1 cm-1 and 0.5×10-4 µg cm-2 respectively. The standard deviation and relative standard deviation were observed as ± 0.00336 and 0.0145% respectively. Various important analytical parameters were evaluated. The method was applied successfully to the determination of Baygon in water, grain, fruits, plant material and biological sample

Low cost spectro photometric determination of paraquat in environmental and biological sample

An extractive, sensitive spectrophotometer method has been developed for the detection and determination of paraquat using glucose ( as easily available reducing agent ). Paraquat is reduced with glucose in alkaline medium to give a blue colored ion with an absorbance maxima at 610 nm. Beer’s law is obeyed in the range 0.5-5.0 µg of paraquat in 10ml of the final solution (ppm). The important analytical parameters and the optimum reaction conditions were evaluated. The method was applied successfully to the determination of paraquat in water, grain, plant material and biological sample

Nutritional Aspects of High Altitude and Snow Bound Areas

The precise nutritional requirement of humans at high altitude area is not well defined. Further there are many conflicting reports on the effects of hypoxia on digestion, absorption and utilization of food at high altitude. In this review the nutritional requirements at high altitude and the effects of hypoxia on humans in relation to nutrition have been discussed

Signatures for doubly-charged Higgsinos at colliders

Several supersymmetric models with extended gauge structures predict light doubly-charged Higgsinos. Their distinctive signature at the large hadron collider is highlighted by studying their production and decay characteristics.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, Latex. Submitted for SUSY 2008 proceeding