Intellectual property law and practice in the blockchain realm

Blockchain technology is claimed to be and perceived as one of the revolutionary technologies that will have an enormous impact on our lives in the forthcoming years and decades. The legal questions surrounding blockchain appear to be among the most controversial issues surrounding this novel technology, which create uncertainties as to the scope and speed of its eventual adoption. Is it legal to use blockchain technology? Does or should any governmental authority or court take a record stored in blockchain into consideration in their decisions? Is blockchain reliable? Can the technology be used for the protection and enforcement of legal and property rights?The technological advancements offered by blockchain promise wide ranges of use in a variety of sectors and legal areas, including intellectual property (IP) law. This paper will focus primarily on the possible opportunities that blockchain may offer with respect to the future of IP law and discuss its potential impact on the registration, management and enforcement of intellectual property rights. We will proceed to offer blockchain-based solutions to foster the operation of IP offices, reinforce customs procedures in detecting counterfeit products, and enhance the efficiency of IP rights management by the right holders. The paper concludes by providing some suggestions to pave the way for the advancement of blockchain technology and to increase the number of people that this technology reaches, as well as its successful integration into the various services and registration/transaction channels that we use today.     

Does Legal Semiotics Cannibalize Jurisprudence?

Does Duncan Kennedy successfully cannibalize jurisprudence? He attempts to do it by demonstrating the inexistence of rightness in legal argumentation. If there is no right legal argument, then there is no right answer in adjudication, adjudication is not a rational enterprise and legal doctrine cannot be said to be a science. It can be shown that skepticism is self-defeating. Duncan Kennedy can avoid self defeat only because he actually believes in a lot of legal arguments. His thesis that judges decide questions of policy without any methodology that distinguishes them from legislators does not hold. Judicial reasoning is subject to constraints that do not affect legislators. It must be based on the sources of law and is limited by rules of procedure. Even when the judges have ‘interstitial’ legislative powers they are, unlike the legislator, bound to fit the system and their decisions are considered in procedure from the perspective of the right answer doctrine. The only work that can convincingly refute the skeptic argument against legal science is the reconstruction of jurisprudence as a scientific enterprise. Such work is beyond the scope of any single paper. The article aims to give some inspirations for such a task.     

Screening for risk of inpatient violence

A screening checklist for assessing the risk of violence at the time of psychiatric hospitalization was developed. Checklist items and a cutoff point for low versus high risk of violence were selected based on a previous study of statistical prediction of violence. Application of the checklist to a new sample of 338 patients admitted to a university-based inpatient unit revealed promising results in identifying patients who later displayed aggressive behavior in the hospital, as indicated by its positive predictive value (59.0%), negative predictive value (70.6%), sensitivity (57.2%), specificity (70.0%), total predictive value (65.4%), and likelihood ratio (1.97). The results suggest the potential value of incorporating actuarial methods in the evaluation of violence risk.Funded in part by Biomedical Research Support Grant Program grant No. SO7-RR05775 from the Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. Portions of this paper were presented at the Biennial Conference of the American Psychology-Law Society/Division 41 of the American Psychological Association, San Diego, CA, March 12–14, 1992. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dale E. McNiel.     

Data on the PCR Turkish population based loci: LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8, and Gc

Allele and genotype frequencies for the five PCR-based loci were analyzed in 157 unrelated Turkish individuals. The five PCR-based loci included LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8, and Gc. The results of the chi-square and exact tests showed that the genotype distribution at the LDLR, GYPA, D7S8, and Gc loci did not significantly differ from the Hardy-Weinberg Expectation (HWE). However, the genotype distribution at the HBGG locus did not conform to HWE. Moreover, the genotype frequencies calculated in this study were compared with the published genotype frequencies of US African American and US Caucasian populations. The Turkish population was significantly different at the HBGG locus from the US Caucasian population. However, there were highly significant differences at the LDLR, HBGG, and Gc loci between the Turkish and African American populations.     

Reform of International Monetary System andConstruction of Global Monetary SecurityMechanism: Connections and Problems

The international monetary system is the basis to establishing acomprehensive global financial safety mechanism. To understand the internalconnections between the reform of the international monetary system and the globalsafety mechanism has important policy implications. The reform of the internationalmonetary system and the construction of the global safety network are inherentlyrelated to each other. Risk management and crisis response are the functions ofthe international monetary system and serve to ensure the safety of the globalfi nancial system; liquidity management and international exchange rate coordinationare conducive to the maintenance of the stability of the global financial system.International exchange rate coordination, the control of spillover effect of US monetarypolicies and the reform of governance structures of the international monetary systemcontribute to global fi nancial safety. However, the reform of the international monetarysystem and the establishment of the global fi nancial safety mechanism are faced withproblems such as Triffin Dilemma, the technical shortcomings of global financialsystem, the ill coordination of global and regional fi nancial security network and thegrowing number of political issues involved. In order to build a sound global fi nancialsafety system, cooperation should be enhanced in the following fi ve aspects: to promotethe reform of the Bretton Woods institutions; to build the global financial safetynetwork; to establish the liquidity management system; to facilitate the construction ofthe super sovereign currency; and to deepen regional monetary cooperation.     

Why Judicial Control of Price Terms in Consumer Contracts Might Not Always Be the Right Answer – Insights from Behavioural Law and Economics

Regulators everywhere are confronted with the question of how to react to contractual pricing structures that serve to hide rather than reveal the real cost of goods and services and thereby abuse limitations in the cognitive competences of consumers. Given that sellers/service providers systematically make use of insights from behavioural sciences to refine their manipulative pricing techniques, regulators should also integrate scientific findings on human decision making to correct behavioural market failures through more tailored policy choices. A holistic approach regarding similar problems is still missing in the EU and the issue is often disguised behind a discussion on unfair terms control, which does not serve the purpose of finding a lasting solution. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to show the weaknesses of an ex post judicial control of pricing techniques, and second, to discuss policy tools which could counterbalance consumer biases on which the techniques rely.