Advocate General's opinion regarding challenges to distinctiveness

Formal invalidity or revocation proceedings must be broughtin order for the distinctiveness of a mark to be challenged;challenges to distinctiveness must not derive from the defendant'suse of an infringing mark.     

If planning is everything,maybe it's nothing

Where planning does not measure up to expectations, which is almost everywhere, planners are handy targets. They have been too ambitious or they have not been ambitious enough. They have perverted their calling by entering into politics or they have been insensitive to the political dimensions of their task. They ignore national cultural mores at their peril or they capitulate to blind forces of irrationality. They pay too much attention to the relationship between one sector of the economy and another while ignoring analysis of individual projects, or they spend so much time on specific matters that they are unable to deal with movements of the economy as a whole. Planners can no longer define a role for themselves. From old American cities to British new towns, from the richest countries to the poorest, planners have difficulty in explaining who they are and what they should be expected to do. If they are supposed to doctor sick societies, the patient never seems to get well. Why can't the planners ever seem to do the right thing?     

Convention effects: examining the impact of national presidential nominating conventions on information,preferences, and behavioral intentions

We ask whether and how US presidential nominating conventions matter in contemporary US elections. Using individual-level panel data, we find evidence that the conventions exert important effects on the electorate by influencing post-convention intentions to participate in electoral politics, knowledge about the candidates, and candidate favorability ratings, even after controlling for pre-convention intentions, knowledge, and candidate ratings. We conclude that conventions remain important campaign events that play a role in facilitating democratic processes in America.     

Poetic Justice: An Interpretation of Lawyers’ Reactions to Verse Judgments

This article offers an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments, being judicial decisions rendered in rhymed poetry form. While, in recent history, there has been an unexplained break in the close historical connection between poetry and law, some judges nevertheless continue to render their judicial decisions in verse. This has met strong criticism from fellow judges, inevitably, but also from lawyers. However, there is no evidence in academic writing of anyone attempting to explain why lawyers are having these reactions. Endeavouring to fill that void, this research employs hermeneutics to offer an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments. The article analyses the varied opinions uncovered in five qualitative interviews with lawyers of different backgrounds, and contends that a movement of poetry back towards its utilitarian origins would see lawyers change their reaction to verse judgments, instead viewing them as an appropriate form of judicial expression.     

The Impact of Unpunished Hate Crimes: When Derogating the Victim Extends into Derogating the Group

Just world research has shown that observers derogate victims more for their misfortunes if the perpetrator is not harshly punished (Lerner in J Personal Soc Psychol 1(4):355–360, 1980). However, few studies have investigated minority group derogation as a just world preservation strategy after instances of intergroup harm-doing. This study is among the first to demonstrate the derogation of both individual victims and of the victim’s minority group experimentally, using the context of a racist hate crime in Australia. In the present experiment, participants (N = 110) read a news article describing a hate crime against an Aboriginal Australian teenager and were informed that the perpetrator was harshly or leniently punished (secure vs. justice threat condition). Our results show that in the justice threat condition, participants not only derogated the individual Aboriginal Australian victim more after his death, they also expressed greater racism toward the victim’s group. An indirect effect of the justice threat condition on modern racism via individual victim derogation was observed, along with moderating effects of individual differences in belief in a just world. These findings provide support for the alarming hypothesis that racist hate crimes are not only the manifestation of a racist society, but may also bolster racial prejudices if leniently treated. The results highlight the important role of political and judicial authorities, whose response or non-response to a hate crime can exacerbate or ameliorate existing prejudices.     

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co.: Supreme Court Expands Rights of Regulated Parties to Challenge Agency Decisions

This article analyzes the potential impacts of the Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. Prior to this decision, federal agency action that merely provided information could not be challenged because of the Administrative Procedure Act allowed parties to challenge only “final agency action.” The Court recognized that some actions that merely provide information can be final because they have legal consequences. To understand the extent to which the Hawkes decision expands the right to challenge agency action, the article compares the Hawkes decision with the Court's decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, where the Court also discussed the issue of “final agency action.” The article concludes that the Court's reasoning regarding what type of consequences make an action “final” is the key to understanding what regulatory action can now be challenged.