Parallel imports: more CD than WOW?

Legal context: Intellectual property rights, particularly trade marks, haveas their primary aim the protection of the rights holder (andperhaps consumer) by allowing him and only him to sell eg, hispatented product, or his product under his trade mark. Counterfeitersand infringers are stopped in their tracks. However, intellectualproperty law has a secondary use – allowing rights holdersto stop products being marketed in Europe without their consent,even when said products are genuine. Key points: This article summarises the law on parallel importation andexhaustion of rights, focussing on two recent UK cases; thesuccessful action by the music industry for copyright infringementby CD-WOW, a leading CD retailer based in Hong Kong and thesuccessful appeal against a finding of trade mark infringementby parallel importer Mastercigars Direct, which imports Cubancigars. Practical significance: Parallel imports provide a means for entrepreneurs to exploitprice differentials between countries in Europe and countriesin the rest of the world. As such, they occur on a significantscale, generating substantial revenues. IP rights holders haveconsistently taken action against such individuals, with Sonyin particular heading to the courts on regular occasions, meetingmostly with success.     

Examining Media Coverage of Drugs in Malaysian Media

Asian Journal of Criminology - It has been well-established that, in the USA, the news media contributes to the construction of moral panics regarding the use and users of various types of drugs....     

Book note

Postgraduate Fieldwork in Developing Areas: A Rough Guide. Edited by E. Robson and K. Willis. Oxford: Developing Areas Research Group of the Institute of British Geographers, 1994. Pp.vi + 162. NP. ISBN 0 9466 8905 9     

Developing a common law of animal welfare: offences against animals and offences against persons compared

Most animal welfare/suffering cases heard by the courts focus only on the facts: did the defendant, as a matter of fact, do those things with which they are charged? Analysis of the 2010 Amersham horse cruelty case reveals that there is significant room for ambiguity and subjective interpretation within the statutes that underpin animal welfare law. To provide certainty and to allow the law to develop it is essential that cases such as Amersham are not only subject to a review of the facts, but also a full analysis of the legal principles contained within the relevant statutes.     

The emergence of learnables in music masterclasses

In music masterclasses instruction is delivered in response to successive learners' performances, with masters having no recourse to lesson plans or other prepared materials. As a result, topics emerge discursively and spontaneously through interaction. In this paper we describe four ways in which masters develop matters for improvement (learnables). Masters may present learnables as being based on master expertise; on masters' direct displayed experience of the student's performance; on the elicited direct experience of the student-performer; or on the elicited direct experience of the audience. By using a conversation analytic approach, we detail the emergence of learnables in five recorded instances.     

Mitochondrial Genome DNA Analysis of the Domestic Dog: Identifying Informative SNPs Outside of the Control Region*

Abstract: While the mitochondrial control region has proven successful for human forensic evaluations by indicating ethnic origin, domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) of seemingly unrelated breeds often form large groups based on identical control region sequences. In an attempt to break up these large haplotype groups, we have analyzed the remaining c. 15,484 base pairs of the canine mitochondrial genome for 79 dogs and used phylogenetic and population genetic methods to search for additional variability in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We have identified 356 SNPs and 65 haplotypes in the remainder of the mitochondrial genome excluding the control region. The exclusion capacity was found to be 0.018. The mitochondrial control region was also evaluated for the same 79 dogs. The signals from the different fragments do not conflict, but instead support one another and provide a larger fragment of DNA that can be analyzed as forensic evidence.