Eyewitness to Jesus: amazing new manuscript evidence about the origin of the Gospels

Reviewed Book: Thiede, Carsten Peter. Eyewitness to Jesus: amazing new manuscript evidence about the origin of the Gospels. New York: Doubleday, 1996

Claim Re-Construction: The Doctrine of Equivalents in the Post-Markman Era

In the post-Markman era, the Federal Circuit has focused attention on the public notice function of patent claims in equivalents cases, and it has come to emphasize precision and accuracy in claim drafting. This Article argues that recent judicial emphasis on the public notice function of patent claims is an inappropriate innovation policy. The demand for highly refined patent claims increases patent acquisition expenditures that are unlikely to increase social welfare, cause patent rights to be distributed unevenly, and are inconsistent with the structural features of the patent system. This Article presents two mechanisms to accommodate the doctrine of equivalents in the post-Markman era. One is the reinvigoration of the reissue proceeding. The other is allowing judicial amendment of patent claims during infringement litigation proceedings, much like the longstanding British practice. This shift would allow courts to pursue the policy goals of Markman for literal and equivalent infringement alike

Liberty and Property in the Patent Law

Patents have seldom troubled civil libertarians. A specialized form of property, patents seemed pertinent to the technologies of traditional industry but little else. Patent instruments offered their readers mere technical documentation; patent cases presented no more than the mapping of a text onto an instantiated artifact; patent policy was principally oriented toward economic optimization of the length and scope of protection. Unbound from technology, contemporary patent law now seems a more robust discipline. Modern patent instruments appropriate a diverse array of techniques that span the entire range of human endeavor. Patent claims, cut loose from physical moorings, have grown more abstract and oriented toward human behavior. We have yet to realize fully the consequences of postindustrial patenting, but the potential impact of the patent law upon personal liberties is becoming more apparent and more worthy of concern. Although the principles of the patent canon demonstrate sufficient flexibility to regulate uses of such inventions as software, business methods, and genetic fragments, they persist in bearing little regard for civil rights. The private rule making, made possible through the patent law, holds the potential to impinge upon individual liberties in ways not previously considered possible

What is Social Capital And Why Does It Matter?

Sparked by the work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, a team of researchers at Harvard University recently conducted a national survey on "social capital," that is, social resources for building healthy societies. With the support of 36 community foundations and four private foundations, the survey included separate surveys of various communities around the country, including a random sample of 510 residents of the Atlanta area under the sponsorship of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. Research Atlanta analyzed the data

The Role of Trade Secrets in Innovation Policy

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of the law and policy of trade secrets. It discusses the role of trade secrets in U.S. innovation policy. It then reviews the sources of trade secret law and the substantive rules that they provide. The report then provides a more detailed review of existing federal legislation that pertains to trade secrets. In its next section, the report then discusses the relationship between patent law and trade secret law. The report closes with an identification of congressional issues and options within this field

Reinventing Municipal Governance: From the New Generation of Big-City Mayors

The decade of the 1990s brought to power in many American cities a new breed of mayors who have sought to reinvent municipal governance through a variety of innovations that, like the mayors themselves, defy easy partisan or ideological classification. These innovations are widely viewed as having helped to turn around such cities as Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York, and Chicago. The purpose of this paper is to explain the most notable of these innovations for possible consideration by Atlanta's incoming mayor