Willful Infringement and the Evidentiary Value of Opinion Letters After Knorr–Bremse v. Dana

Recently, the Federal Circuit in Knorr-Bremse v. Dana overruled almost twenty years of precedent by striking down the adverse inference doctrine, which had created a negative presumption against any alleged patent infringer for failing to obtain and disclose a patent opinion letter at trial. The decision, while strongly supported by numerous intellectual property and business associations, has created uncertainty for patent attorneys regarding the use of opinion letters in litigation and the acceptable methods for proving willful infringement. This iBrief addresses two specific questions left unanswered by the decision. It concludes that (1) Federal Circuit precedent strongly suggests that the plaintiff may inform the fact-finder that the alleged infringer failed to consult legal counsel, and (2) willful infringement findings can probably be avoided even absent an opinion from counsel, as long as the alleged infringer makes a showing of good faith intent to avoid infringement

The Story of a Successful School : Bryant & Stratton Business College of Providence Rhode Island

A 30 page illustrated booklet describing the early history of the college and course of study while located in the Hoppin Homestead Building at 357 Westminster, Providence, Rhode Island. Photos include Demonstrating the Multigraph and Group in Phonographic Dictation

Maximum a posteriori estimation of piecewise arcs in tempo time-series

In musical performances with expressive tempo modulation, the tempo variation can be modelled as a sequence of tempo arcs. Previous authors have used this idea to estimate series of piecewise arc segments from data. In this paper we describe a probabilistic model for a time-series process of this nature, and use this to perform inference of single- and multi-level arc processes from data. We describe an efficient Viterbi-like process for MAP inference of arcs. Our approach is score-agnostic, and together with efficient inference allows for online analysis of performances including improvisations, and can predict immediate future tempo trajectories.Comment: Submitted to postprint volume for Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval (CMMR) 201

Acoustic event detection for multiple overlapping similar sources

Many current paradigms for acoustic event detection (AED) are not adapted to the organic variability of natural sounds, and/or they assume a limit on the number of simultaneous sources: often only one source, or one source of each type, may be active. These aspects are highly undesirable for applications such as bird population monitoring. We introduce a simple method modelling the onsets, durations and offsets of acoustic events to avoid intrinsic limits on polyphony or on inter-event temporal patterns. We evaluate the method in a case study with over 3000 zebra finch calls. In comparison against a HMM-based method we find it more accurate at recovering acoustic events, and more robust for estimating calling rates.Comment: Accepted for WASPAA 201

An open dataset for research on audio field recording archives: freefield1010

We introduce a free and open dataset of 7690 audio clips sampled from the field-recording tag in the Freesound audio archive. The dataset is designed for use in research related to data mining in audio archives of field recordings / soundscapes. Audio is standardised, and audio and metadata are Creative Commons licensed. We describe the data preparation process, characterise the dataset descriptively, and illustrate its use through an auto-tagging experiment

Classic British Response in England

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Chase Stowell describes his observations during his study abroad program at the University of Nottingham in England