The Golden Week Wall

Typically,when China’s weeklong National Day holiday rolls around on October 1,I cringe at the thought of traveling anywhere outside of Beijing.Doing so requires battling crowds of unimaginable scale,when seemingly everyone in the capital,all 20 million,packs up a few suitcases with clothes and instant noodles and makes a mad dash for a train or bus station.During the past Golden Week,at least     

Railway Dreaming: Lessons for Economic Regulators from Aboriginal Resource Management Lore

Railway reform in the past decade has seen the introduction of mandated third party access to track in a number of jurisdictions. This article argues that third party access changes the property rights associated with railway track, rendering it a common pool resource. As such, it is useful to ask whether the literature on the governance of common pool resources could inform the economic regulation of railways. This article suggests that it might, and draws some lessons from the common pool resource governance mechanisms traditionally used by Australia's Aborigines in managing their land that may have application within the context of the railways.     

Down to business

Legal context: A comparison of patent law relating to business method inventionsin the USA, before the European Patent Office, and in the UK. Key points: Broadly speaking, the interpretation of the US, UK, and Europeanpatent law concerning what can and cannot be patented appearsto have been largely finalized. However, as new cases are heardthe status quo is often disturbed, and this can make the applicationprocess difficult and expensive for applicants. The UK and Europeanpositions differ, despite guidelines indicating that as faras possible, the positions should be the same. In the USA also,although the approach is very different to Europe and the UK,a debate seems still to be raging as to the limits of the subjectmatter for which patents should be granted. Practical significance: The article will be helpful for anyone who wishes to quicklyunderstand the present approach to business method inventionsin these three jurisdictions.     

Tourism and sentencing: Establishing informal status privileges

This article follows a recent international case where tourism has influenced a criminal trial and its outcome. In order to assess the real impact of this development it draws upon the conceptual frameworks that have informed sentencing to establish best fit with existing theories. Furthermore, it compares this informal development in sentencing with recent legislation in the UK (and more established provision in the United States) designed to outlaw hate crimes. From this it is possible to see that certain countries reliant on tourism are offering tourists what might be termed ‘status privileges’ (a concept borrowed and adapted from the hate crime literature), which serves to distort justice and lays the foundations for a two-tier system that can only lead to inferior protection for indigenous people.