Liability Rules for the Digital Age

With legislative proposals for two directives published in September 2022, the European Commission aims to adapt the existing liability system to the challenges posed by digitalisation. One of the proposals is related and limited to liability for artificial intelligent (AI) systems, but the other contains nothing less than a full revision of the 1985 Product Liability Directive, which lies at the heart of European tort law. Whereas the current Product Liability Directive largely followed the model of US law, the revised version breaks new ground. It does not limit itself to the expansion of the concept of product to include intangible digital goods, such as software and data as well as related services, important enough in itself, but also targets the new intermediaries of e-commerce as liable parties. As such, the proposal for a new product liability directive is a great leap forward and has the potential to grow into a worldwide benchmark in the field. In comparison, the proposal of a directive on AI liability is much harder to assess. It remains questionable whether a second directive is actually needed at this stage of the technological development.Peer Reviewe

Mandatory Contract Law: Functions and Principles in Light of the Proposal for a Directive on Consumer Rights

Starting from the theoretical underpinnings of contract law, mandatory rules should be the exception. In the reality of current European legislation, mandatory law is not the exception but the rule. The obvious explanation is that the EU has focussed on consumer law, i.e. on the regulation of transactions between a business and a consumer. In a B-to-C relationship, the consumer is perceived as the weaker party which requires protection against the more powerful business. The following article tries to dismantle the assumptions that consumers are weak and that the ‘weakness’ of consumers forms the normative basis for the body of Directives we now have before us. The Draft Proposal of a Directive on Consumer Rights is used as an object for analyses from the perspectives of comparative law and economic reasoning. The argument is that, while there are important areas where mandatory law is justified, the card of mandatory law has been overplayed in important respects. In particular, the petrification of the law of sales that began with the Directive on Consumer Sales and Guarantees seems to be unjustified. Within a system that allows for court control over standard contract terms, the need for mandatory law is negligible. Where court control over standard terms is perceived not to be sufficient, ‘options’ should be used instead of mandatory law. While options preserve party autonomy, they do limit freedom of choice to a set of immutable alternatives. And in doing so, they reconcile party autonomy with legal certainty

Schadensersatz bei Kartelldelikten

Mit der VO 1/2003 hat die Kommission einen Paradigmenwechsel im Europäischen Wettbewerbsrecht vollzogen. Seit 1962 lag die Durchsetzung der gemeinschaftsrechtlichen Wettbewerbsregeln vor allem in den Händen der Kommission selbst. Nach der Ersten DurchführungsVO zu den heutigen Art. 81, 82 EG hatte die Kommission insbesondere ein Entscheidungsmonopol über die Ausnahmebestimmungen des Art. 81 Abs. 3 EG. Die VO 1/2003 löst dieses System des behördlichen Vollzugs des Kartellrechts ab und setzt ein Modell an seine Stelle, das vor allem auf private enforcement" setzt. Im Kern liegt darin ein Umschwenken von einer administrativ gesteuerten ex-ante Kontrolle zu einer durch die Privatinitiative angetriebenen ex-post Kontrolle aufgrund entsprechender Individualklagen.

Optimization of van der Waals Energy for Protein Side-Chain Placement and Design

AbstractComputational determination of optimal side-chain conformations in protein structures has been a long-standing and challenging problem. Solving this problem is important for many applications including homology modeling, protein docking, and for placing small molecule ligands on protein-binding sites. Programs available as of this writing are very fast and reasonably accurate, as measured by deviations of side-chain dihedral angles; however, often due to multiple atomic clashes, they produce structures with high positive energies. This is problematic in applications where the energy values are important, for example when placing small molecules in docking applications; the relatively small binding energy of the small molecule is drowned by the large energy due to atomic clashes that hampers finding the lowest energy state of the docked ligand. To address this we have developed an algorithm for generating a set of side-chain conformations that is dense enough that at least one of its members would have a root mean-square deviation of no more than R Å from any possible side-chain conformation of the amino acid. We call such a set a side-chain cover set of order R for the amino acid. The size of the set is constrained by the energy of the interaction of the side chain to the backbone atoms. Then, side-chain cover sets are used to optimize the conformation of the side chains given the coordinates of the backbone of a protein. The method we use is based on a variety of dead-end elimination methods and the recently discovered dynamic programming algorithm for this problem. This was implemented in a computer program called Octopus where we use side-chain cover sets with very small values for R, such as 0.1 Å, which ensures that for each amino-acid side chain the set contains a conformation with a root mean-square deviation of, at most, R from the optimal conformation. The side-chain dihedral-angle accuracy of the program is comparable to other implementations; however, it has the important advantage that the structures produced by the program have negative energies that are very close to the energies of the crystal structure for all tested proteins

Hiking Trip Selection Based On Reachability By Public Transport

Smart cities should enable the citizens to utilize available ressources. One of the goals is the reduction of individual motorized traffic. However, many citizens still use cars to get to the location of an ourtdoor activity. As a concrete example we use hiking trips and identify those that can be reached by public transport. The result is a map (and a corresponding GIS data set) showing the hiking locations for a single day hiking trip. The concept can be used for various other applications although there are still open questions, e.g., what part of the answer can be precomputed and what should be determined on demand

Bewertung verschiedener Alternativen zur Kraftstoff‭‭‭‭-‭Einsparung im privaten Pkw-Verkehr

Die Ölkrise 1973 führte auch in Deutschland zu politischen Auffanglösungen. Dazu gehörten vor allem vier aufeinanderfolgende autofreie Sonntage ab 25. November 1973 sowie allgemeine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen für sechs Monate. Die Sonntags-fahrverbote stellten entferntere Tourismus- und Freizeitgebiete vor besondere Probleme und verstärkten die Suche nach. raumordnungspolitisch verträglicheren Lösungen. Die Prüfung der Vorschläge schloss alle Sparmaßnahmen im Verkehr ein, die öffentlich diskutiert oder in Briefen an den Bundesminister für Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Städtebau angeregt worden waren. Den Kern der hier dargestellten Kurzanalyse bildete die Ministervorlage der drei Autoren. Darin wurden folgende alternative Maßnahmen zur Kraftstoffeinsparung im Verkehr verglichen und bewertet. • Fahrverbot für private Pkw an Wochenenden, gestaffelt nach der Zahl der Verbotstage (Sonntag bzw. Samstag) pro Monat, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw auf Bundesfernstraßen und Bundesautobahnen, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw im Umkreis von mehr als 30 km vom Standort, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw an allen Tagen zwischen 10 und 16 Uhr, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw mit Besetzungsgrad unter 2 Personen bei zeitlicher Limitierung, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw an 2 Tagen der Woche nach Wahl, • Fahrverbot für private Pkw an 3 Tagen pro Monat gemäß Zulassungsnummer und • Rationierung der Benzinausgabe mit Bezugsscheinen für jedermann, die personell übertragen und deshalb am Markt gehandelt werden können. Die Kurzanalyse offenbart die instrumentelle Überlegenheit der Maßnahme, die Benzinausgabe mit übertragbaren Benzinscheinen zu rationieren. Ihre Einsparmöglichkeiten sind flexibel handhabbar. Auch damit verbundene sektorale und personelle Entzugseffekte sind besonders gering. Schließlich vermeidet dieser Lösungsweg Kontroll-aufwand und zeitliche wie räumliche Ausweichreaktionen.The 1973 oil crisis led, also in Germany as in other countries, to a search for emergency solutions. These included most notably all consecutive car-free Sundays from 25 November 1973 and general speed limits for six months. The ban on Sunday driving led to a massive drop in demand in more distant recreation and leisure areas and intensified the search for politically more acceptable solutions. The examination of the proposals made included all fuel-cutting measures widely discussed in public or proposed in letters from the general public to the Federal Minister of Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development. The core of the brief analysis presented here was the paper to the minister by the three authors. This paper compared and evaluated the following fuel-saving measures in transport: • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars at weekends according to the number of ban days (Sunday or Saturday) per month, • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars on German motorways and Federal trunk roads, • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars beyond a 30 kilometre radius from the place where the vehicle is based, • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars on all days between 10.00 and 16.00, • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars with an occupancy rate less than 2 people and temporal limitation • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars on 2 days per week of the driver‘s choice, • a nationwide driving ban for passenger cars on 3 days per dependent on the registration number and • strictly rationed petrol sales with coupons for everybody that may be transfered and traded on secondary markets The brief analysis showed the superiority of the measure to restrict petrol sales by transferable coupons. It was a flexible solution which could be adjusted to circumstances. Related problems like sectoral or human hardships would therefore be limited. This approach would greatly reduce the burden of administration and enforcement and prevent attempts to circumvent bans temporally or spatially

Characterization of the distribution of internal motions in the basic pancreatic trypsin inhibitor using a large number of internal NMR probes

The experimental observations described in this article indicated that a distribution of many different fluctuations is present in a globular protein. These fluctuations were characterized by observation of many natural internal probes such as the labile peptide protons and the aromatic side chains. The conditions which are necessary to get reactions of the internal probes have been discussed in detail. The structural interpretation of the data was facilitated by the development and the use of new NMR techniques which provided the identification of the resonances of all the labile peptide protons. With NOE measurements a distinction between correlated and uncorrelated exchange events was obtained. This enabled us to elucidate the exchange mechanism over a wide range of p2H and temperature and to classify different subsets of fluctuations with respect to their lifetimes. It was further demonstrated that a change of external conditions such as temperature, p2H or pressure can change the distribution of fluctuations in the protein. The mechanisms responsible for rotation of internal aromatic side chains were also found to change with temperature, and mechanistic aspects of these fluctuations were discusse

4EGI-1 targets breast cancer stem cells by selective inhibition of translation that persists in CSC maintenance, proliferation and metastasis

Cancer death is a leading cause of global mortality. An estimated 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer deaths occurred worldwide in 2012 alone. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) within tumors are essential for tumor metastasis and reoccurrence, the key factors of cancer lethality. Here we report that 4EGI-1, an inhibitor of the interaction between translation initiation factors eIF4E1 and eIF4G1 effectively inhibits breast CSCs through selectively reducing translation persistent in breast CSCs. Translation initiation factor eIF4E1 is significantly enhanced in breast CSCs in comparison to non-CSC breast cancer cells. 4EGI-1 presents increased cytotoxicity to breast CSCs compared to non-CSC breast cancer cells. 4EGI-1 promotes breast CSC differentiation and represses breast CSC induced tube-like structure formation of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). 4EGI-1 isomers suppress breast CSC tumorangiogenesis and tumor growth in vivo. In addition, 4EGI-1 decreases proliferation in and induces apoptosis into breast CSC tumor cells. Furthermore, 4EGI-1 selectively inhibits translation of mRNAs encoding NANOG, OCT4, CXCR4, c-MYC and VEGF in breast CSC tumors. Our study demonstrated that 4EGI-1 targets breast CSCs through selective inhibition of translation critical for breast CSCs, suggesting that selective translation initiation interference might be an avenue targeting CSCs within tumors