Technology transfer and academic education with a focus on diversity

This paper describes the “Presence on Campus” technology transfer experiment that Hughes Electronics Corporation is conducting with a large minority institution, California State University, Los Angeles (CSLA). It presents the experiment in the context of the company's workforce diversity objectives and its internal and other external education diversity efforts, as well as CSLA's minority education and research and development programs. The article summarizes progress toward the promotion of resource-leveraging joint R&D projects and student intern involvement, as well as the definition of industry-relevant thesis topics. Some lessons learned are reported.     

Guiding Principles for Directorial Conflicts of Interest: Re Allied Business and Financial Consultants Ltd; O'Donnell v Shanahan

The Court of Appeal has disposed of the ‘scope of business’ test as the touchstone principle for directorial entrepreneurship cases and has confirmed the continuing applicability of a capacity approach while emphasising the importance of directors obtaining the company's informed consent before taking up opportunities that they encounter. This provides welcome legal certainty but raises interesting questions about the scope of a director's disclosure obligations.     

Management of technology in Taiwan

National technological programs in Taiwan aiming at commercial applications have been proliferating. However, their management is incompletely documented. This paper uses a comparative-technology perspective to examine taiwan's eight national programs in energy, materials, information, automation, biotechnology, electro-optics, hepatitis control, and food. It offers management implications concerning (a) national technology capability based on technology imitation and a strategy of backward integration; (b) R&D selection, technical service strategy, and performance; (c) interorganizational technology transfer; (d) alliance strategies; and (e) functional integration.     

Selling your organization on technology transfer: The metaphor of movement

Corporate technology transfer strategies often focus on the movement of tangible assets—products, processes, “off-the-shelf” technologies, and so on. We argue that the transfer of information- and knowledge-based assets are a critical element of successful competition in global markets, particularly for service industries. In this article we develop a model for (1) identifying a company's “information asset portfolio” and (2) managing the flow of these assets for commercial gain. The Technology Transfer Professional is at the center of this process of information movement and management.     

Identifying Successor Corporations Liable under CERCLA and Pursuing Insurance Coverage for That Liability

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) imposes liability well beyond general corporate successor rules. A company can allocate liability to other Potentially Responsible Parties as more culpable, taking advantage of CERCLA's joint and several liability. Often a source of recovery must be teased from a complex corporate history somehow connected to the site. This article examines the basis for attributing environmental liability to entities within a corporate history, before addressing how even a bankrupt or dissolved target may still have insurance that can be tapped. Similarly, CERCLA's strict liability enables recovery from insurance with some connection to either the target's or the company's corporate history, notwithstanding insurers' non-assignment arguments.     

The Role of Technology in Small Firm Diversification

Sophisticated technologies are finding applications in an ever-growing number of products, from medical devices to children's toys. As high-technology applications proliferate, their use and development is no longer associated only with large companies, universities, and national laboratories. Many small companies compete on the basis of high technology products, processes and materials. While small companies have long been recognized as fertile ground for developing new technologies, little recognition has been given to the important role they play in transferring technologies between industries. This article therefore describes the central role that technology played in the diversification efforts of nine New England defense contractors. One of the study';s key findings is that successful firms relied upon their existing technical and management capabilities to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage in their new civilian markets. The article also describes a number of other factors that contributed to the success of their diversification efforts.     

Tackling the U3 trend with computer forensics

A new technology has emerged, allowing applications to be stored and run on portable devices, such as flash drives and iPods. Sandisk's U3™ smart technology appears to be becoming the standard in this new realm of portability. With the advent of this technology, questions are arising as to the effects it will have on computer forensic investigations. Probably hundreds of thousands of people have purchased devices with U3 or similar technologies already. The fear is that these people will be able to plug their devices into computers, do their misdeeds and then simply unplug those devices, removing any trace. This article will illustrate that this is not the case and will discuss different artifacts that a device such as this will leave behind. For the purposes of this illustration we have investigated the use of some of the most common applications used on U3 drives. This information will serve as a guide to investigating computer crimes perpetrated via U3 or similar technologies. Investigators must keep in mind during their investigations the possibility that their suspects have used such technology, particularly when their investigations seem to lead to a dead end.     

How to Push an Elephant Through a Straw: Using Wireless Technology in a Web-enhanced Skills Program

The title of this article derives from the expression used by programmers and developers to explain problems of limited network bandwidth connection speeds. The ever-increasing demand by growing numbers of web users for bandwidth-intensive media is outstripping the Internet's capacity to deliver information. In this case, the 'Elephant' is the massive online information system, including text, graphics, audio, and video, and the 'Straw' is the low bandwidth through which only a fixed volume can move. Generally, compression of data is the way to push that elephant through the straw. Included among those users competing for bandwidth are law schools. In the last decade, technology has begun to occupy a more pivotal role in American legal education. As law firms increase their use of technology in response to client demand, they must hire associates who graduate from law school prepared for high-technology law practice. The resulting pressure on law schools to incorporate technology into class materials and instruction has arisen contemporaneously with pressure to increase the teaching of lawyering skills. A tension arises, however, between the obligation of legal educators to expose students to emerging technologies and the additional burdens thereby imposed upon law schools to add lawyering skills to the the existing curriculum without displacing needed doctrinal and analytical instruction. The authors are faculty members and administrators at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Shepard Broad Law Center, which was named "Most Wired Law School" by National Jurist in 1998 and 2001. The centrepiece of legal education at NSU is a high technology Lawyering Skills and Values Program that employs wireless classrooms and web-enhanced education. Delivering a lawyering skills course through technology is not unlike pushing an elephant through a straw. The challenge is to accomplish pedagogical goals without compressing either the curriculum or the social processes of teaching and learning. This article describes and evaluates the authors' practical experiences planning, implementing, and teaching a Lawyering Skills course to first-year students in a wireless classroom environment.     

Assumption of Responsibility in Corporate Groups: Chandler v Cape plc

In Chandler v Cape plc, the Court of Appeal imposed for the first time liability on a company for a breach of its duty of care to an employee of its subsidiary. In doing so, the court laid out a new four‐part test for ascertaining a parent company's responsibility for the health and safety of individuals employed by group companies. Although liability of parent companies may be justified under the right circumstances, the court's approach in Chandler is problematic in a number of ways and raises more questions than it answers.     

The Bermuda Islands blow ‘sweet & sour’ on employers’ liability for Internet libel

The Bermudian Supreme Court (at first instance) recently ruled in Bermuda Restaurants Limited (t/a “Chopsticks”) v. Jonathan Daspin and ConvergEx Global Markets Ltd. (Civil Jurisdiction 2008: No. 134 (to be reported)) on the issue of whether an employer (here, a company) should be held liable for an allegedly libellous email publication by its employee, the managing director. The Judge was asked by the employer company to determine two issues of law which exposed the company and which centred on its vicarious liability for its employee's actions, including whether the use of the company's email system, during working hours, made it complicit in the publication. The Court held, applying principles of English and Canadian law, that the company was not vicariously liable and by extension that it was not the email's publisher.     

Karl Polanyi and the Problem of Corporate Social Responsibility

This article considers Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of the projects in ‘new governance and decentred regulation’, which draw social forces towards the regulation of economic behaviour. It uses Karl Polanyi to open up pertinent interfaces between society and economy for observation, and Gunther Teubner to substantiate a ‘regulatory’ view of the company's social relationships. The article finds that CSR combines movements for the recognition of social relationships, on an unprecedented scale, with rigorous simultaneous movements for market building and social abstraction. Twenty‐first‐century market economy is defined by a capacity to contain ‘the social,’ which is thrown between the two movements, creating opportunities for companies to void the market's social limits. The article counterposes that the social that ‘returns’ after marketization needs to find its way past market‐building CSR, to constructively unshackle and redefine the framing of social conflicts that concern the corporation.     

The effects of certain intermediary target materials and their proximity to ballistic gelatin on jacketed hollow point bullet expansion

Expanding bullets are preferred by law enforcement because of their wounding potential and ability to avoid over-penetration which could result in unintended targets being struck by bullets that perforate their intended targets. Expansion failure for jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullets is commonly attributed to several causes including damage to the bullet's cavity, velocity loss, bullet destabilization and materials from intermediate targets filling the bullet's cavity which can cause expansion failure when the bullet subsequently impacts a soft, fluid-based target such as human tissue or ballistic gelatin. In this study, JHP bullets were fired into ballistic gelatin after passing through selected intermediate targets representing items common to shooting incidents. Velocity loss and bullet destabilization were not factors that contributed to the JHP bullets that experienced expansion failure; however, materials obstructing the bullets' cavities and damage to the bullets' cavities were considered causes for some of the JHP bullet expansion failures. It was determined through this research that most of the target materials caused JHP bullet expansion failure when shored against the ballistic gelatin, but when placed at distances of 7 ft. from the ballistic gelatin, bullets fired through the same target materials did expand. This original and unique study produced findings that are of significant value to shooting incident reconstruction experts and other forensic professionals as shooting incidents can call into question a victim's proximity to a wall or door when a bullet(s) perforated such a target material.     

资本制度变革下的资本法律责任——公司法修改的理性解读

公司法资本制度的重大变革并未否定资本制度的基本原理和与之相关的股东出资义务和责任。取消最低资本额,改变的只是股东出资义务的范围或数额,而非股东出资义务本身。公司资本从有限制的认缴制到无限制的认缴制,改变的只是股东履行出资义务的期限,股东以其认缴而非实缴的出资额为限对公司债务负责,资本的"认而不缴"并不免除股东的出资义务或责任。认缴资本的采用也不能终结或取代实缴资本的独特作用。资本真实的法律要求不因取消法定最低资本额和实行完全的认缴资本制而改变,取消验资的特定法律程序,决非否定资本真实性的法律要求,而只是改变资本真实的实现方式。     

Beyond the census. Reconstructing Dutch women's labour market participation in agriculture in the Netherlands,ca. 1830–1910

Many historians have pointed out for various countries that nineteenth-century national censuses do not accurately reflect women's economic activity. This was no different for the Dutch national censuses. In this article, we argue that under-recording was especially severe in agriculture, and that this problem increased towards the end of the century. The rise in under-recording was partly due to an increased irregularity of women's work on farms, but it also reflected changing living standards and ideologies, in which work was increasingly defined as undesirable for women. In relative terms, agriculture did become less important to men and women alike because of mechanization and industrialization. Nevertheless, agriculture continued to employ many women, especially married women and daughters working on their husbands' and fathers' farms. By offering additional source material and methods for estimating women's labour force participation in agriculture on a regional level, such as relating their occupational status to their husbands', and estimating the number of days worked, we aim to offer an enhanced methodology for gauging the work of women in agriculture, which may be applied to future research.     

Questioning Fundamentals: Leyland Daf and the 'Ownership' of Charged Property

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Retraction . Modern Law Review 67: 6, 1046‐1046 .
Online publication date: 1‐Oct‐2004. Although the House of Lords decision in Leyland Daf was primarily concerned with the order for distribution of assets in a winding‐up, it has several other far‐reaching ramifications and repercussions. The reasoning of their Lordships in the case alters our understanding of the very nature and operation of a charge over a company's assets. This reasoning strikes at the heart of the law of security interests, bringing into question the fundamental distinction between a charge and a mortgage. Furthermore the decision has given a whole new complexion to the concept of a floating charge which will have tremendous consequences for its application in commercial practice. This paper analyses the decision firstly on the basis of its legal principle and then on the basis of its policy considerations and concludes that its reasoning is neither sound nor justifiable on either ground.     

Italian women after development: Employment,entrepreneurship, and domestic work in the Third Italy

The highly successful economic development over the past 30 years of central and northeastern Italy, commonly referred to as the Third Italy, has created significant economic and social gains for the regions' women. The high historical prevalence of extended and multiple households among agricultural sharecroppers provided the social materials necessary for constructing a rapid and efficient engine of accumulation in the area's dynamic, small-firm-based economy. Though women have achieved some economic autonomy through employment and entrepreneurial activities, their achievement of greater economic equity is impeded by the continuing double burdens of employment inside and outside of the home. After examining the dimensions of women's status mobility with particular reference to the Marche region, one of the Third Italy's most economically dynamic, as well as socially conservative regions, it is argued that increasing state subsidies to families with children might increase women's options and help achieve greater equity between the sexes.     

Italian women after development

The highly successful economic development over the past 30 years of central and northeastern Italy, commonly referred to as the Third Italy, has created significant economic and social gains for the regions' women. The high historical prevalence of extended and multiple households among agricultural sharecroppers provided the social materials necessary for constructing a rapid and efficient engine of accumulation in the area's dynamic, small-firm-based economy. Though women have achieved some economic autonomy through employment and entrepreneurial activities, their achievement of greater economic equity is impeded by the continuing double burdens of employment inside and outside of the home. After examining the dimensions of women's status mobility with particular reference to the Marche region, one of the Third Italy's most economically dynamic, as well as socially conservative regions, it is argued that increasing state subsidies to families with children might increase women's options and help achieve greater equity between the sexes.     

Attribution in Company Law

In Bilta (UK) Ltd (in liquidation) v Nazir (No 2), the Court of Appeal held that the ex turpi causa defence was inapplicable by refusing to attribute the fraud of the directors and the sole shareholder to the company in connection with the company's claim against them and third party co‐conspirators. It is significant that the court has not only clarified the law in relation to attribution, but it did so by rejecting the majority's reasoning and endorsing the dissenting judgment in the House of Lords decision in Stone & Rolls (in liquidation) v Moore Stephens (a firm). This article evaluates the decision in Bilta by critically examining the fundamental principles and policies that apply to the three distinct circumstances under which corporate attribution should or should not take place.     

Maintaining the high-tech edge: Governmentindustry technology transfer and the federal laboratory system in California

One of the important resources to any state, such as California, is the technology that is available from the many federally operated and/or funded laboratories within its borders. In this age of technology a state needs to take advantage of applications of modern technology and innovative exploitation of human and natural resources. This article illuminates the importance of the Federal Government research laboratories. Many examples are presented to support the argument that the Federal Government research laboratories can be and often are substantial contributors to the storehouse of technology that finds its way to the private sector and public sector. Several types of technology transfer are discussed, i.e. primary technology, secondary applications, mission related, technical assistance and cooperative. In addition the article discusses the structure and logic of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). The legislaltion that has helped to make the FLC effective is discussed. Included in the discussion are insights of how the FLC operates and how the private sector and public sector may use the FLC in order to locate process, product and service technology.