Foreign problems and domestic laws

The complexities presented by the conflicts of law were longavoided in the UK, unlike in other European countries. The Englishjudges, pragmatic as ever, used a legal fiction to ensure thatno action ever had a foreign element. If an action arose betweenan English and French merchant in Paris, then the imaginativecourt would determine that the events took place in ‘Paris,at London in the parish     

Experience in the transfer of handpump technology to less developed countries

Many of the world's nations have neither adequate water supplies nor sufficient sanitation facilities. The United Nations, therefore, designated 1981–1990 as the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade with the explicit goal of providing the world's poor with access to adequate water supplies and proper sanitations. Over the past eight years, the International Division of the Engineering Experiment Station at Georgia Tech has been helping the world's poorer countries assess their need for handoperated water pumps, develop effective hand pump programs, and manufacture, install, maintain and monitor the pumps. The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodology for technology transfer that is applicable to hand pumps as well as to numerous other hardware items.     

Measuring technology transfer performance: A case study

The debate continues on how to measure results of technology transfer. New and revised models are being conceived and tested in various economic settings. This paper addresses the performance measures that are being derived from the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce technology transfer program.     

Redistribution and the income of the median voter

The income of the median voter has been measured by median income. This measure fails to consider the income distribution of both voters and number of adults per family. Proper measures of the income of the median voter change standard results. This income is no longer less than mean income; its ratio to mean income is only slightly related to the ratio of median to mean income.     

If Extremists Vote How do They Express Themselves? An Empirical Test of an Expressive Theory of Voting

The expressive theory of voting needs more specification of the motives for expression if it is not merely to be a theory of non-instrumental voting. Brennan and Hamlin provide such a specification. Unfortunately, using individual U.S. data from the General Social Surveys we find their predictions are contradicted. Nor if other evidence in the literature purported to be evidence of expressive voting actually implied by it. We believe that this is because the reason people express themselves in voting is to signal others.     

"A Very Present Menace"? Attlee, Communism and the Cold War!

With the end of the Cold War and the further opening of archives, the role of Western communist parties and their relationship with the former Soviet Union has been the subject of fresh scrutiny. This article examines the conviction of the British Labour Government and its security services that the Communist Party of Great Britain represented, at least in the early Cold War period, a "very present menace". The article discusses the policies of the Soviet Union in Europe and the Communist Party in Britain and explores how these shaped the perspectives of the Attlee Government, especially during the London dock strike of 1949. When placed against this background, Attlee's anti-communism can no longer be accepted, as most commentators do, as simply a product of Cold War paranoia.     

Implementing Community obligations in the realms of intellectual property

Legal context. The various Acts of Parliament governing UK intellectualproperty law have been significantly amended to give effectto Community law. This article discusses the powers used bythe Secretary of State to implement Community obligations andthe Court of Appeal's recent clarification of the scope of thosepowers. Key points. This article describes the concerns expressed bysome commentators on the scope of the powers under the EuropeanCommunities Act 1972 and the key cases on that scope, includingOakley v Animal. The article uses the implementation of performers'moral rights as an example of where going beyond strict Communityobligations is necessary. Practical significance. The article will be useful to anyoneconsidering the validity of the changes made to domestic law,including amendments to primary legislation, to implement Directivesor other Community obligations.     

'Dedicating' Copyright to the Public Domain

This article explores whether authors can dedicate their copyright to the public domain. Such dedications are becoming increasingly relevant as authors now see the expansion of the public domain as value in itself. This is facilitated by organisations providing pro forma documents for dedicating works to the public domain. However, there has been no real consideration of what, if any, legal effect a dedication to the public might have. This article suggests that such dedications are no more than copyright licences which, in English and US law at least, can be revoked at will. This means that users of such works must rely on estoppel alone to enforce any dedication to the public domain.