School sport following London 2012: no more political football third report of session 2013-14: Vol. 1 Report, together with formal minutes

Enabling power: Education Act 1996, s. 537A (4) (5) (6). Issued: 29.05.2013. Made: 20.05.2013. Laid: 29.05.2013. Coming into force: 28.06.2013. Effect: S.I. 2009/1563 amended. Territorial extent and classification: E. General

Can Post-Grant Reviews Improve Patent System Design? A Twin Study of US and European Patents

This paper assesses the impact of adopting a post-grant review institution in the US patent system by comparing the “opposition careers” of European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of litigated US patents to those of a control group of EPO patents. We demonstrate several novel methods of "twinning" US and European patents and investigate the implications of employing these different methods in our data analysis. We find that EPO equivalents of US litigated patent applications are more likely to be awarded EPO patent protection than are equivalents of unlitigated patents, and the opposition rate for EPO equivalents of US litigated patents is about three times higher than for equivalents of unlitigated patents. Patents attacked under European opposition are shown to be either revoked completely or narrowed in about 70 percent of all cases. For EPO equivalents of US litigated patents, the appeal rate against opposition outcomes is considerably higher than for control-group patents. Based on our estimates, we calculate a range of net welfare benefits that would accrue from adopting a post-grant review system. Our results provide strong evidence that the United States could benefit substantially from adopting an administrative post-grant patent review, provided that the post-grant mechanism is not too costly

The Impact of Patenting on New Product Introductions in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Since Comanor and Scherer (1969), researchers have been using patents as a proxy for new product development. In this paper, we reevaluate this relationship by using novel new data. We demonstrate that the relationship between patenting and new FDA-approved product introductions has diminished considerably since the 1950s, and in fact no longer holds. Moreover, we also find that the relationship between R&D expenditures and new product introductions is considerably smaller than previously reported. While measures of patenting remain important in predicting the arrival of product introductions, the most important predictor is the loss of exclusivity protection on a current product. Our evidence suggests that pharmaceutical firms are acting strategically with respect to new product introductions. Finally, we find no relationship between firm size and new product introductions.Patenting; Pharmaceutical industry; New product management; Research productivity

Hosting Byzantine Fault Tolerant Services on a Chord Ring

In this paper we demonstrate how stateful Byzantine Fault Tolerant services may be hosted on a Chord ring. The strategy presented is fourfold: firstly a replication scheme that dissociates the maintenance of replicated service state from ring recovery is developed. Secondly, clients of the ring based services are made replication aware. Thirdly, a consensus protocol is introduced that supports the serialization of updates. Finally Byzantine fault tolerant replication protocols are developed that ensure the integrity of service data hosted on the ring.Comment: Submitted to DSN 2007 Workshop on Architecting Dependable System

Can Post-Grant Reviews Improve Patent System Design? A Twin Study of US and European Patents

This paper assesses the impact of adopting a post-grant review institution in the US patent system by comparing the “opposition careers†of European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of litigated US patents to those of a control group of EPO patents. We demonstrate several novel methods of "twinning" US and European patents and investigate the implications of employing these different methods in our data analysis. We find that EPO equivalents of US litigated patent applications are more likely to be awarded EPO patent protection than are equivalents of unlitigated patents, and the opposition rate for EPO equivalents of US litigated patents is about three times higher than for equivalents of unlitigated patents. Patents attacked under European opposition are shown to be either revoked completely or narrowed in about 70 percent of all cases. For EPO equivalents of US litigated patents, the appeal rate against opposition outcomes is considerably higher than for control-group patents. Based on our estimates, we calculate a range of net welfare benefits that would accrue from adopting a post-grant review system. Our results provide strong evidence that the United States could benefit substantially from adopting an administrative post-grant patent review, provided that the post-grant mechanism is not too costly.patent system; post-grant review; opposition; litigation