Predictability and Patentable Processes: The Federal Circuit's In re Bilski Decision and Its Effect on the Incentive to Invent

Throughout the past two centuries, the U.S. patent system has defined the scope of (potentially) patentable processes by proscribing patents on fundamental principles (including abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena). Unfortunately, such a description of patentable subject matter led to ambiguity and unpredictability in the application of the patent laws. In 2008, the Federal Circuit addressed this uncertainty by promulgating a new standard to describe the ambit of patentable processes: a process may constitute patentable subject matter if (1) it utilizes a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms an object into a different state or thing. This Article describes how the Federal Circuit's new standard furthers the underlying policy goal of all patent laws: the incentivization of innovation. Specifically, this paper argues that this new rule presents a simple and easy to apply standard that will increase the predictability of the patent laws. In the presence of such predictability, prospective inventors and investors are more likely to engage in research and development, thus leading to increased inventive activity

An Empirical Study of Gender and Race in Trademark Prosecution

This Article is the first to empirically examine the extent to which women and minorities succeed in prosecuting trademark applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). Trademark registration is an important measure of entrepreneurial activity and progress in business, education, and the arts. To explore how women and minorities are succeeding in this domain, we compared 1.2 million trademark applications over thirty years with demographic information on race and gender. We analyze whether trademark prosecution reflects systematic underrepresentation of women and minorities similar to those reported in patent and copyright prosecution. We found that trademark data showed significant differences from the other two federal intellectual property (“IP”) regimes. Our analysis reveals that women regularly secure trademark registration at a higher rate than men. Women are underrepresented in the pool of trademark applicants compared to their presence in the population, but not all minority groups are underrepresented. For women and underrepresented minorities, the disparity is decreasing at a rate not seen in other IP registration systems. While recent work has significantly advanced our understanding of trademark prosecution, no published studies consider the race and gender of trademark applicants. By filling that void, this Article substantially contributes to our understanding of minority intellectual property ownership and provides a new foundation for policy shifts and further research to assure that intellectual property ownership paths, theory, law, and reform are grounded in equality

Grid Fin Stabilization of the Orion Launch Abort Vehicle

Wind tunnel tests were conducted by Nielsen Engineering & Research (NEAR) and Rose Engineering & Research (REAR) in conjunction with the NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) on a 6%-scale model of the Orion launch abort vehicle (LAV) configured with four grid fins mounted near the base of the vehicle. The objectives of these tests were to 1) quantify LAV stability augmentation provided by the grid fins from subsonic through supersonic Mach numbers, 2) assess the benefits of swept grid fins versus unswept grid fins on the LAV, 3) determine the effects of the LAV abort motors on grid fin aerodynamics, and 4) generate an aerodynamic database for use in the future application of grid fins to small length-to-diameter ratio vehicles similar to the LAV. The tests were conducted in NASA Ames Research Center's 11x11-foot transonic wind tunnel from Mach 0.5 through Mach 1.3 and in their 9x7-foot supersonic wind tunnel from Mach 1.6 through Mach 2.5. Force- and moment-coefficient data were collected for the complete vehicle and for each individual grid fin as a function of angle of attack and sideslip angle. Tests were conducted with both swept and unswept grid fins with the simulated abort motors (cold jets) off and on. The swept grid fins were designed with a 22.5deg aft sweep angle for both the frame and the internal lattice so that the frontal projection of the swept fins was the same as for the unswept fins. Data from these tests indicate that both unswept and swept grid fins provide significant improvements in pitch stability as compared to the baseline vehicle over the Mach number range investigated. The swept fins typically provide improved stability as compared to the unswept fins, but the performance gap diminished as Mach number was increased. The aerodynamic performance of the fins was not observed to degrade when the abort motors were turned on. Results from these tests indicate that grid fins can be a robust solution for stabilizing the Orion LAV over a wide range of operating conditions

The Astropy Problem

The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Microstructural evolution during high-temperature oxidation of spark plasma sintered Ti2AlN ceramics

Microstructures of Ti2AlN ceramics synthesized and simultaneously consolidated from starting mixtures of Ti/Al/TiN powders by spark plasma sintering (SPS) were characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, focused ion beam (FIB) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). When sintered for 10 min at 1300 °C, nearly single-phase Ti2AlN ceramics with elongated (∼22 × 6 × 6 μm) grains were obtained. After sintering for 10 min at 1200 °C and chemical etching, Ti2AlN nanowhiskers (150–200 nm dia., 1–5 μm long) were exposed in pores coexisting with TiAl, TiN and Ti2AlN grains. FIB-TEM studies revealed single-crystal Ti2AlN nanowhiskers in a TiAl matrix with orientation relationship [1 1 −2 0]H//[−1 0 1]γ, (0 0 0 1)H//(1 1 1)γ, γ = TiAl, H = Ti2AlN. The nanowhiskers are believed to form by diffusion of TiN into TiAl during SPS and to be exposed during the chemical etch. Microstructural development during high-temperature oxidation of dense Ti2AlN ceramics for 1 h at 1200 °C, more complex layered microstructures containing Al2TiO5, rutile, α-Al2O3 and continuous voids layers form. After heating to 1100 °C for 1 h and cooling to room temperature, planar defects are observed in surface TiO2 grains identified as stacking faults bounded by partial dislocations. After heating for 1 h at 1400 °C and cooling to room temperature, cracks propagate in TiO2 grains. It is believed that planar defects and cracks arise from stress generation in the oxide scale. Thermal stresses formed on cooling may arise from thermal expansion mismatch of phases (TiO2, Al2O3 and Al2TiO5) in the oxide scale, the high anisotropy of thermal expansion in Al2TiO5 and thermal expansion mismatch between the oxide scale and Ti2AlN substrate. Growth stresses formed during the isothermal oxidation treatment may arise from the volume changes associated with oxidation reactions of Ti2AlN. An oxidation mechanism for Ti2AlN ceramics is proposed, which involves initial reaction with atmospheric oxygen to form oxide phases, demixing of the mixed oxide phases, void formation due to the Kirkendall effect and gaseous NOx release. Oxidation of Ti2AlN <1200 °C with 1 h hold times is limited, while above this temperature the oxide scale grows rapidly, and Ti2AlN ceramics undergo heavy oxidation

Ensembl’s 10th year

Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org) integrates genomic information for a comprehensive set of chordate genomes with a particular focus on resources for human, mouse, rat, zebrafish and other high-value sequenced genomes. We provide complete gene annotations for all supported species in addition to specific resources that target genome variation, function and evolution. Ensembl data is accessible in a variety of formats including via our genome browser, API and BioMart. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Ensembl and in that time the project has grown with advances in genome technology. As of release 56 (September 2009), Ensembl supports 51 species including marmoset, pig, zebra finch, lizard, gorilla and wallaby, which were added in the past year. Major additions and improvements to Ensembl since our previous report include the incorporation of the human GRCh37 assembly, enhanced visualisation and data-mining options for the Ensembl regulatory features and continued development of our software infrastructure