Fifth Avenue and the Patent Lawyer: Strategies for Using Design Patents to Increase the Value of Fashion and Luxury Goods Companies, 5 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 40 (2005)

Design patents occupy a peculiar niche in intellectual property law. For instance, they are different from copyrights in that an accused infringer has no defense of independent creation, different from utility patents in that there is no prerequisite of a useful function, and different from trade dress in that there is no issue of secondary meaning. Design patents also contain only one claim, which makes the applicant’s drafting task particularly challenging—she must strike a delicate balance between claiming broad protection and establishing novelty. Furthermore, in litigation, the design patent plaintiff must satisfy two tests of infringement: the ordinary observer and point of novelty tests. This article provides an overview of important aspects of design patent prosecution and litigation that will enable an attorney to increase the value of a client’s creative designs

Person-specific theory of mind in medial pFC

Although research on theory of mind has strongly implicated the dorsomedial pFC (incuding medial BA 8 and BA 9), the unique contributions of medial pFC (MPFC; corresponding to medial BA 10) to mentalizing remain uncertain. The extant literature has considered the possibility that these regions may be specialized for self-related cognition or for reasoning about close others, but evidence for both accounts has been inconclusive. We propose a novel theoretical framework: MPFC selectively implements "person-specific theories of mind" (ToMp) representing the unique, idiosyncratic traits or attributes of well-known individuals. To test this hypothesis, we used fMRI to assess MPFC responses in Democratic and Republican participants as they evaluated more or less subjectively well-known political figures. Consistent with the ToMp account, MPFC showed greater activity to subjectively well-known targets, irrespective of participants' reported feelings of closeness or similarity. MPFC also demonstrated greater activity on trials in which targets (whether politicians or oneself) were judged to be relatively idiosyncratic, making a generic theory of mind inapplicable. These results suggest that MPFC may supplement the generic theory of mind process, with which dorsomedial pFC has been associated, by contributing mentalizing capacities tuned to individuated representations of specific well-known others

Tradition and Prudence in Locke's Exceptions to Toleration

Why did Locke exclude Catholics and atheists from toleration? Not, I contend, because he was trapped by his context, but because his prudential approach and practica ljudgments led him to traditiona ltexts. I make this argumentfirst by outlining the connections among prudential exceptionality, practical judgments, and traditional texts. I then describe important continuities betweenc onventional English understandings of the relationship between state and religion and Locke's writings on toleration, discuss Locke's conception of rights, and illustrate his use of prudential exceptions and distinctions. I conclude by arguing that Locke's problems are relevant to assessingc ontemporary liberal discussions of tolerationa nd the separation of state and religion that lean heavily on practical justification

Disconfirmation modulates the neural correlates of the false consensus effect: A parametric modulation approach

The false consensus effect (FCE) - the tendency to (erroneously) project our attitudes and opinions onto others - is an enduring bias in social reasoning with important societal implications. In this fMRI investigation, we examine the neural correlates of within-subject variation in consensus bias on a variety of social and political issues. Bias demonstrated a strong association with activity in brain regions implicated in self-related cognition, mentalizing, and valuation. Importantly, however, recruitment of these regions predicted consensus bias only in the presence of social disconfirmation, in the form of feedback discrepant with participants' own attitudes. These results suggest that the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the tendency to project attitudes onto others are crucially moderated by motivational factors, including the desire to affirm the normativity of one's own position. This research complements social psychological theorizing about the factors contributing to the FCE, and further emphasizes the role of motivated cognition in social reasoning