A Free Bite at the Apple: How Flawed Statutory Drafting Has Undermined the Purpose of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

In the years before Congress passed the America Invents Act, patent litigation became exorbitantly expensive. Congress created three types of proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which were intended to provide a cheaper and more cost-effective alternative to district court litigation over patent validity. A major factor in ensuring that the PTAB proceedings effectively substituted for district court litigation was a harsh estoppel provision that prevented any petitioner from relitigating any issue which was raised or reasonably could have been raised during the PTAB proceeding. The Federal Circuit, however, recently applied a narrow interpretation to the estoppel provision which jeopardizes the ability of PTAB proceedings to replace district court litigation. While it would be easy to place all the blame on the Federal Circuit for defanging the estoppel provision, this Note argues that the failure of PTAB proceedings to substitute for district court litigation ultimately stems from poor drafting within the America Invents Act. The combination of broad Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) substantive rulemaking power, unreviewable PTAB decisions to institute, and a sweeping estoppel provision doomed PTAB proceedings to failure. This Note offers that Congress must update the language of the statute itself in order to effectively address the issues presented by this combination

Press and human rights : the policy of 'the less stir, the better'

Os debates em torno do tema direitos humanos chegaram a uma complexidade tal que tornaram-se tema tabu no Brasil. E a imprensa, que também rejeita qualquer tipo de debate sobre si mesma, faz coro em deixar as reflexões e as práticas dos direitos humanos à margem. No caso tratado por este artigo, além do papel dos meios de comunicação, é analisado como o Governo do Estado do Espírito Santo adotou a política da não-política em pontos consensoados pela sociedade civil na elaboração do Programa Estadual de Direitos Humanos e do Plano Estadual de Educação em Direitos Humanos. Mostrando as exclusões, o texto também lança possibilidades de avanços na temática

INTERNÇÃO COMPULSÓRIA: UM DESAFIO À POLÍTICA ANTIMANICOMIAL

Resumo Este trabalho tem como objeto de estudo analisar a visão de pacientes que se encontram internados compulsoriamente para o tratamento de álcool e outras drogas. Tem como objetivos problematizar as medidas de internação compulsória enquanto retrocesso à política de saúde mental instituída pela Lei 10.216 e como mecanismo sociopolítico de reprodução das desigualdades sociais. Metodologicamente, utilizou-se abordagem qualitativa e entrevistas. Conclui que tais práticas se configuram como uma política de cunho higienista e moralizador, descartando como tratamento os serviços substitutivos, impondo a esses sujeitos um tratamento pautado na abstinência que, configura-se na prática, como punição aos usuários pobres de drogas

How old is the Tasmanian cultural landscape? a test of landscape openness using quantitative land-cover reconstructions

Aim: To test competing hypotheses about the timing and extent of Holocene landscape opening using pollen-based quantitative land-cover estimates. Location: Dove Lake, Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, Australia. Methods: Fossil pollen data were incorporated into pollen dispersal models and corrected for differences in pollen productivity among key plant taxa. Mechanistic models (REVEALS-Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites) employing different models for pollen dispersal (Gaussian plume and Lagrangian stochastic models) were evaluated and applied in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Results: Validation of the REVEALS model with vegetation cover data suggests an overall better performance of the Lagrangian stochastic model. Regional land-cover estimates for forest and non-forest plant taxa show persistent landscape openness throughout the Holocene (average landscape openness similar to 50%). Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus, an indicator of moorland vegetation, shows higher values during the early Holocene (11.7-9 ka) and declines slightly through the mid-Holocene (9-4.5 ka) during a phase of partial landscape afforestation. Rain forest cover reduced (from similar to 40% to similar to 20%) during the period between 4.2-3.5 ka. Main conclusions: Pollen percentages severely under-represent landscape openness in western Tasmania and this bias has fostered an over-estimation of Holocene forest cover from pollen data. Treeless vegetation dominated Holocene landscapes of the Dove Lake area, allowing us to reject models of landscape evolution that invoke late-Holocene replacement of a rain forest-dominated landscape by moorland. Instead, we confirm a model of Late Pleistocene inheritance of open vegetation. Rapid forest decline occurred after c.4 ka, likely in response to regional moisture decline.Australian Research Council; AINSE AWARD [ALNGRA16024]; AINSE PGRA scholarship [12039]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Simultaneous determination of natural and synthetic steroid estrogens and their conjugates in aqueous matrices by liquid chromatography / mass spectrometry

An analytical method for the simultaneous determination of nine free and conjugated steroid estrogens was developed with application to environmental aqueous matrices. Solid phase extraction (SPE) was employed for isolation and concentration, with detection by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) using electrospray ionisation (ESI) in the negative mode. Method recoveries for various aqueous matrices (wastewater, lake and drinking water) were determined, recoveries proving to be sample dependent. When spiked at 50 ng/l concentrations in sewage influent, recoveries ranged from 62-89 % with relative standard deviations (RSD) < 8.1 %. In comparison, drinking water spiked at the same concentrations had recoveries between 82-100 % with an RSD < 5%. Ion suppression is a known phenomenon when using ESI; hence its impact on method recovery was elucidated for raw sewage. Both ion suppression from matrix interferences and the extraction procedure has bearing on the overall method recovery. Analysis of municipal raw sewage identified several of the analytes of interest at ng/l concentrations, estriol (E3) being the most abundant. Only one conjugate, estrone 3-sulphate (E1-3S) was observe

Fate of conjugated natural and synthetic steroid estrogens in crude sewage and activated sludge batch studies

This document is the unedited author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Environmental Science & Technology, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es801952h.Steroids are excreted from the human body in the conjugated form but are present in sewage influent and effluent as the free steroid, the major source of estrogenic activity observed in water courses. The fate of sulfate and glucuronide conjugated steroid estrogens was investigated in batch studies using activated sludge grown on synthetic sewage in a laboratory-scale Husmann simulation and crude sewage from the field. A clear distinction between the fate of sulfate and glucuronide conjugates was observed in both matrices, with sulfated conjugates proving more recalcitrant and glucuronide deconjugation preferential in crude sewage. For each conjugate, the free steroid was observed in the biotic samples. The degree of free steroid formation was dependent on the conjugate moiety, favoring the glucuronide. Subsequent degradation of the free steroid (and sorption to the activated sludge solid phase) was evaluated. Deconjugation followed the first order reaction rate with rate constants for 17α-ethinylestradiol 3-glucuronide, estriol 16α-glucuronide, and estrone 3-glucuronide determined as 0.32, 0.24, and 0.35 h respectively. The activated sludge solid retention time over the range of 3−9 days had 74 to 94% of sulfate conjugates remaining after 8 h. In contrast, a correlation between increasing temperature and decreasing 17α-ethinylestradiol 3-glucuronide concentrations in the activated sludge observed no conjugate present in the AS following 8 h at 22 °C Based on these batch studies and literature excretion profiles, a hypothesis is presented on which steroids and what form (glucuronide, sulfate, or free) will likely enter the sewage treatment plant.EPSR

«Las Batuecas» lopescas : cuando lo híbrido se hace espectáculo

Las Batuecas del duque de Alba (Parte XXIII, Madrid, 1638) es una comedia ostensiblemente liminar, proteica en géneros, temas, tipos, lugares y tiempos. El presente trabajo propone estudiar el pronunciado hibridismo de esta pieza lopiana, escudriñando aspectos como la cuestión de la adscripción genérica, los procesos de hibridación protagonizados por los personajes, el mestizaje lingüístico y las alteridades temporales y geográficas de su peculiar cronotopo.Las Batuecas del duque de Alba (Parte XXIII, Madrid, 1638) is an overtly liminal comedy, with a wide range of genres, themes, types, places and times. This article studies the noticeable hybridism of the Lope de Vega's piece, by scrutinizing aspects, such as genre, processes of hybridization experienced by characters, linguistic crossbreeding and the changing features of time and place in the play's particular chronotope

Los bandos de Sena: un mosaico por reconstruir

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo reconstruir el complejo proceso genético de Los bandos de Sena de Lope de Vega, pieza compuesta entre 1597 y 1603, a partir de la novella 49 de la Parte I de la colección bandelliana, tratando a la vez de poner al descubierto la diversificación argumental y la singular recomposición de la antigua leyenda senesa por él realizad