US patent infringement statute extends to the international market for copies of US software

In a patent infringement action involving the internationaldistribution of Microsoft's Windows software, the United StatesCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has interpreted USpatent statute 35 USC section 271(f) as extending infringementliability to foreign computers assembled with copies of softwarereplicated abroad from a US-made master version.     

Plagiarism, Academic Norms and the Governance of the Profession

Few would dissent from the view that plagiarism is an academic crime of the worst sort. Attention to the issue has been heightened recently by the growth of websites supplying 'off the peg' or customised research papers. This article argues that the definition and detection of plagiarism involves several complexities and that the resolution of the problem depends less on the development of coercive instruments to deal with the 'crime' than on the development of norms that emerge through reflective pedagogy and processes of academic socialisation.     

Regulation and brand value

Legal context. IP rights are dependent on the public policyconsiderations which provide the justification for their granting.However, when regulation impacts on the exercise of IP rights,there is often a clash of public policy considerations. Key points. This article considers what happens when that clashoccurs, concluding that, in all cases, IP rights will be trumpedby the public policy considerations which underlie the regulation,often with no basis for claiming compensation notwithstandingthe obvious and very real economic impact on the rights owner.Unfortunately, the markets do not always take this risk intoaccount when valuing premium brand companies. Practical significance. This conclusion may have serious implicationsfor premium brand companies, especially in heavily regulatedfields like alcohol, food, pharmaceuticals, and tobacco.     

“De-skilling” the 1891 Censuses in New South Wales and Tasmania

The 1891 censuses taken in New South Wales and Tasmania abandoned the long-established practice of grouping working-class occupations into “skilled” and “unskilled” categories. Instead, they were grouped into “Industrial” categories that did not differentiate between grades or degrees of skill. In this paper the sudden disruption to the preceding practice is explained as an effect of the intersection of two histories: the changing meaning of skill, and the history of scientific method. The paper traces the transformations in meanings of skill from an “artisanal” to an “industrial” form and examines how the two central figures in the construction of the 1891 census — the statisticians T.A Coghlan and R.M Johnston — were enmeshed in that history. Coghlan is usually given the more prominent role in accounts of late nineteenth-century statistics, but in this case Johnston's expertise in using scientific method was instrumental in the “deskilling” of the census.