Competition Law and Copyright Misuse

In the past two decades, copyright protection throughout the world has been greatly expanded to respond to challenges posed by new communications technologies and copyrightable subject matters. As protection has increased, the growing power of copyright owners has also led to market abuses that stifle competition and innovation. In response to these abuses, courts, litigants, policy makers, and commentators have increasingly embraced competition law, the doctrines of copyright misuse and unclean hands, and tort law concepts as counter-balancing tools. This article discusses four different types of abuse that has occurred in the copyright area and examines the various legal doctrines that have been employed by Canadian and U.S. courts to resolve cases involving such abuse. The first section discusses the limited monopolies of copyright owners and the various safeguards that have been built into the copyright system. Using five recent cases - four in the United States and one in Canada - this Part highlights the growing abuse of copyright by its owners in recent years. The second section discusses the uneasy relationship between copyright law and the law of monopolies. It explores four categories of abuse cases and how the law has been applied in these cases. The final section examines legal doctrines that lie outside competition law, but have yet to be used to deal with copyright abuse. In particular, this Part discusses the doctrines of copyright misuse and unclean hands and the claims of abuse of process and tortious interference

Boundedness properties of fermionic operators

The fermionic second quantization operator $d\Gamma(B)$ is shown to be bounded by a power $N^{s/2}$ of the number operator $N$ given that the operator $B$ belongs to the $r$-th von Neumann-Schatten class, $s=2(r-1)/r$. Conversely, number operator estimates for $d\Gamma(B)$ imply von Neumann-Schatten conditions on $B$. Quadratic creation and annihilation operators are treated as well.Comment: 15 page

Tunneling dynamics of side chains and defects in proteins, polymer glasses, and OH-doped network glasses

Simulations on a Lennard-Jones computer glass are performed to study effects arising from defects in glasses at low temperatures. The numerical analysis reveals that already a low concentration of defects may dramatically change the low temperature properties by giving rise to extrinsic double-well potentials (DWP's). The main characteristics of these extrinsic DWP's are (i) high barrier heights, (ii) high probability that a defect is indeed connected with an extrinsic DWP, (iii) highly localized dynamics around this defect, and (iv) smaller deformation potential coupling to phonons. Designing an extension of the Standard Tunneling Model (STM) which parametrizes this picture and comparing with ultrasound experiments on the wet network glass $a$-B$_2$O$_3$ shows that effects of OH-impurities are accurately accounted for. This model is then applied to organic polymer glasses and proteins. It is suggested that side groups may act similarly like doped impurities inasmuch as extrinsic DWP's are induced, which possess a distribution of barriers peaked around a high barrier height. This compares with the structurlessly distributed barrier heights of the intrinsic DWP's, which are associated with the backbone dynamics. It is shown that this picture is consistent with elastic measurements on polymers, and can explain anomalous nonlogarithmic line broadening recently observed in hole burning experiments in PMMA.Comment: 34 pages, Revtex, 9 eps-figures, accepted for publication in J. Chem. Phy

Competition Law and Copyright Misuse

In the past two decades, copyright protection throughout the world has been greatly expanded to respond to challenges posed by new communications technologies and copyrightable subject matters. As protection has increased, the growing power of copyright owners has also led to market abuses that stifle competition and innovation. In response to these abuses, courts, litigants, policy makers, and commentators have increasingly embraced competition law, the doctrines of copyright misuse and unclean hands, and tort law concepts as counter-balancing tools. This article discusses four different types of abuse that has occurred in the copyright area and examines the various legal doctrines that have been employed by Canadian and U.S. courts to resolve cases involving such abuse. The first section discusses the limited monopolies of copyright owners and the various safeguards that have been built into the copyright system. Using five recent cases - four in the United States and one in Canada - this Part highlights the growing abuse of copyright by its owners in recent years. The second section discusses the uneasy relationship between copyright law and the law of monopolies. It explores four categories of abuse cases and how the law has been applied in these cases. The final section examines legal doctrines that lie outside competition law, but have yet to be used to deal with copyright abuse. In particular, this Part discusses the doctrines of copyright misuse and unclean hands and the claims of abuse of process and tortious interference

Pair-Breaking in Rotating Fermi Gases

We study the pair-breaking effect of rotation on a cold Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover region. In the framework of BCS theory, which is supposed to be qualitatively correct at zero temperature, we find that in a trap rotating around a symmetry axis, three regions have to be distinguished: (A) a region near the rotational axis where the superfluid stays at rest and where no pairs are broken, (B) a region where the pairs are progressively broken with increasing distance from the rotational axis, resulting in an increasing rotational current, and (C) a normal-fluid region where all pairs are broken and which rotates like a rigid body. Due to region B, density and current do not exhibit any discontinuities.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; v2: discussion clarified, typos corrected, one reference adde

Bi2Te3Bi_2Te_3: Implications of the rhombohedral k-space texture on the evaluation of the in-plane/out-of-plane conductivity anisotropy

Different computational scheme for calculating surface integrals in anisotropic Brillouin zones are compared. The example of the transport distribution function (plasma frequency) of the thermoelectric Material \BiTe near the band edges will be discussed. The layered structure of the material together with the rhombohedral symmetry causes a strong anisotropy of the transport distribution function for the directions in the basal (in-plane) and perpendicular to the basal plane (out-of-plane). It is shown that a thorough reciprocal space integration is necessary to reproduce the in-plane/out-of-plane anisotropy. A quantitative comparison can be made at the band edges, where the transport anisotropy is given in terms of the anisotropic mass tensor.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figs., subm. to J. Phys. Cond. Ma

Spectral function and quasi-particle damping of interacting bosons in two dimensions

We employ the functional renormalization group to study dynamical properties of the two-dimensional Bose gas. Our approach is free of infrared divergences, which plague the usual diagrammatic approaches, and is consistent with the exact Nepomnyashchy identity, which states that the anomalous self-energy vanishes at zero frequency and momentum. We recover the correct infrared behavior of the propagators and present explicit results for the spectral line-shape, from which we extract the quasi-particle dispersion and damping.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revisited version, to appear as Phys. Rev. Lette

Collapsed 2-Dimensional Polymers on a Cylinder

Single partially confined collapsed polymers are studied in two dimensions. They are described by self-avoiding random walks with nearest-neighbour attractions below the $\Theta$-point, on the surface of an infinitely long cylinder. For the simulations we employ the pruned-enriched-Rosenbluth method (PERM). The same model had previously been studied for free polymers (infinite lattice, no boundaries) and for polymers on finite lattices with periodic boundary conditions. We verify the previous estimates of bulk densities, bulk free energies, and surface tensions. We find that the free energy of a polymer with fixed length $N$ has, for $N\to \infty$, a minimum at a finite cylinder radius $R^*$ which diverges as $T\to T_\theta$. Furthermore, the surface tension vanishes roughly as $(T_\theta-T)^\alpha$ for $T\to T_\theta$ with $\alpha\approx 1.7$. The density in the interior of a globule scales as $(T_\theta-T)^\beta$ with $\beta \approx 0.32$.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure

Dipolar superfluidity in electron-hole bilayer systems

Bilayer electron-hole systems, where the electrons and holes are created via doping and confined to separate layers, undergo excitonic condensation when the distance between the layers is smaller than typical distance between particles within a layer. We argue that the excitonic condensate is a novel dipolar superfluid in which the phase of the condensate couples to the {\it gradient} of the vector potential. We predict the existence of dipolar supercurrent which can be tuned by an in-plane magnetic field and detected by independent contacts to the layers. Thus the dipolar superfluid offers an example of excitonic condensate in which the {\it composite} nature of its constituent excitons is manifest in the macroscopic superfluid state. We also discuss various properties of this superfluid including the role of vortices.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, minor changes and added few references; final published versio

Video Didactic Preparation Augments Problem-Based Learning for First Year Medical Students.

Problem-based learning (PBL) utilizes a self-directed strategy. This process relies on group participation to succeed. Students without a background in biology or medicine can feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject matter and unable to participate in the group learning process. We incorporated curated educational videos in the PBL curriculum to help address this situation. First year medical students participated in this study in the form of a typical PBL session. They were then assessed on basic and clinical science knowledge and their learning experience. Student basic science and clinical knowledge were similar between the student groups. However, the students given a list of suggested videos scored higher in their learning experience, perception of feeling prepared, and participating in the group PBL experience than students who were not given the video list. Results from this study indicate that videos can be utilized to enhance the PBL process