House of Lords simplifies the law on patent entitlement

The House of Lords has held that, to claim entitlement to another'spatent or patent application, a person need only prove thathe was the inventor of the subject-matter of the patent, anddoes not also need to invoke ‘some other rule of law’as required previously by the Court of Appeal in Markem v Zipher[2005] RPC 31.     

Regulation and the Role of Trust: Reflections from the Mining Industry

The role of prosecution in achieving compliance with social regulation is a highly contentious issue, nowhere more so than with regard to work-related injury and death in the New South Wales mining industry. Following a mining disaster, political pressure prompted the mines inspectorate to abandon its traditional 'advise and persuade' approach in favour of a much tougher, deterrence-oriented approach. Our field-work suggests that while the former approach can result in regulatory capture, the latter can be equally counterproductive. In the mining industry, interactions between inspectors and the regulated industry are frequent and ongoing and trust is central to constructive relations. When those relations break down (as under an inappropriate prosecution policy) then dialogue ceases, information is withheld rather than shared, in-firm accident investigation, prevention, and remedial action are inhibited and both sides retreat to a form of adversarialism that undermines regulatory effectiveness. Through a 20-year case study of the mines inspectorate, the article demonstrates the centrality of trust to regulatory effectiveness, how it can be lost, and how it can best be regained.     

Exploring black political intolerance

Forty years of research in political tolerance has produced only tangential evidence of blacks' commitment to the principles of democracy and their willingness to apply them to specific situations. Implicit in this literature is that blacks' socialization into a rigid culture stressing authoritarian values, low levels of education, and certain psychological deficiencies interfere with the acquisition of democratic values. As a result, black intolerance is accepted as uncontrollable and involuntary. In this paper, I challenge this view of black intolerance. In particular, I consider how black political intolerance is used as an emancipatory strategy to protect blacks from groups who directly threaten their physical and psychological security. The analysis reveals that blacks identify the historical and current attempt of the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and demean them, and thus, attempt to restrain its behavior. Black intolerance is a conscious and focused decision that allows blacks to distinguish between everyday racists and bigots, and the anxiety and fear generated by the Klan.     

Voices from the Margins: Sadomasochism and Sexual Citizenship

Practitioners of sadomasochism (SM) are currently excluded from full citizenship in the UK. However, in recent years we have seen a growth in stories of sadomasochism and with this a challenge to this exclusion from some within SM communities. Over the last ten years or so we also have witnessed the emergence of feminist, sexual and queer citizens providing radical challenges to mainstream approaches to citizenship. This article explores how SM provides boundary tests for notions of citizenship and how it also occupies a particularly complex position with regard to the relationship between citizenship and transgression and the intersection of gender, sexuality and citizenship. In the light of this, it is argued that it is necessary to engage dialectically with citizenship and transgression as a way of meeting the different needs of community members while continuing to work to transform the sexual citizen.     

关于成人网络游戏玩家与未成年网络游戏玩家的比较研究

尽管网络游戏日益流行,但一直没有关于成人游戏者与未成人游戏者的比较性调查。为此,我们对EverQuest(简称EQ,中文名称为“无尽的任务”,是由美国索尼在线娱乐公司开发的知名网络游戏——译者注)游戏者(n=540)的相关特征进行了网上问卷调查。该调查主要考察了游戏玩家基本的人口学特征、游戏的频率、玩游戏的历史、游戏的偏好及玩游戏的代价等。结果表明未成年的游戏者多为男性,相较于成年游戏者,他们更不喜欢变换角色性别,更愿意牺牲学习和工作的时间。在游戏偏好的比较中,成年与非成年游戏群体的最大区别在于更多的未成年人认为他们喜好…