The Patents Court's streamlined litigation procedure--two years on

Legal and practical context. The streamlined procedure is asimplified patent litigation procedure that was introduced overtwo years ago in the English Patents Court and Patents CountyCourt. This article looks at the procedure, the way it has beenapplied since its introduction and the effect it has had onpatent litigation in the UK. Key points. The procedure was designed to deal with simple patentcases quickly and relatively cheaply. It is geared towards aone day trial taking place approximately eight months afterthe commencement of proceedings. Under the procedure there isno automatic disclosure, no experiments and cross-examinationis limited to permitted topics only. Although it was designedwith patents in mind, the procedure is available for all appropriateactions heard in the Patents Court and Patents County Court.It is only suitable, however, for relatively simple actionsin which complex findings of fact are not necessary. Conclusions. Not many actions have come to trial under thisprocedure, but its availability is nonetheless of great significanceto patent litigation in the UK. This is because it providesa new point of departure for directions in certain types ofaction and because its availability has increased access topatent litigation in the UK and has renewed interest in thePatents Court and Patents County Court as forums in which toissue patent proceedings.     

Reviews

R. W. Davies, ed., From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy. Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990, xx + 417 pp., £45.00.

Alastair McAuley, ed., Soviet Federalism, Nationalism and Economic Decentralisation. Leicester and London: Leicester University Press, 1991, ix + 214pp., £38.00.

Loren Graham, ed., Science and the Soviet Social Order. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1990, ix + 443 pp., £27.95.

Ronald I. McKinnon, The Order of Economic Liberalization: Financial Control in the Transition to a Market Economy. Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xii + 200 pp., £20.00. $32.00.

Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd 1917–1922. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, xviii + 461 pp., £45.00.

David Armstrong & Erik Goldstein, eds, The End of the Cold War. London: Frank Cass & Co Ltd, 1990. 216pp., £19.50.

Paul B. Stephan III & Boris M. Klimenko, eds, International Law and International Security: Military and Political Dimensions. A US‐Soviet Dialogue. Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991, xxii + 362 pp., $90.00.

Richard F. Staar, Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1991, xl + 352 pp., £14.95 p/b.

Robert O. Freedman, Moscow and the Middle East: Soviet Policy Since the Invasion of Afghanistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xi + 426 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in The Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, ix + 319 pp., £27.50 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, x + 231 pp., £35.00.

Shams Ud Din, ed, Perestroika and the Nationality Question in the USSR. New Delhi: Vikas, 1991, xv + 145 pp., £15.95.

Ronald J. Hill & Jan Zielonka, eds, Restructuring Eastern Europe: Towards a New European Order. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1990, ix + 226 pp., £28.50.

Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution 1919–1953. London: Harvard University Press, 1991, v + 259 pp., £27.95 h/b.

Bartlomiej Kamiriski, The Collapse of State Socialism: the Case of Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, xiv + 264 pp., $39.50 h/b, $14.95 p/b.

David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti‐Politics. Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 1990, xi + 279 pp. $34.95.

Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity—A Political Sociology of Working Class Democratisation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1991, xii + 247 pp., $24.95.

Keith Sword, ed, The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939–41. London: Macmillan (in association with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies), 1991, xxiii + 318 pp., £45.00.

William B. Husband, Revolution in the Factory: The Birth of Soviet Textile Industry, 1917–20. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, viii + 227 pp. £25.00.     

An unusual shotgun injury pattern produced by an intermediate target

Discharge of a shotgun with a shotgun casing in its muzzle as a "dust cover" produced a pattern of injuries suggestive of combined intermediate- and distant-range wounds.     

Doctors under the knife

With Bill Clinton's new reforms only a month away, the health-care system is on the operating table--and the doctors are under the knife. Americans have a love-hate relationship with physicians: they like the care that doctors provide but hold them to blame for the nation's health-care mess. NEWSWEEK looks at how the culture of medicine may change, assesses doctors' fears--and examines the brave new world of HMOs.     

Book reviews

A. L. Meiendorf, Optimizatsiya khozyaistvennykh reshenii: metod analiza prirashchenii. Series: Aktual'nye problemy sel'skogo khozyaistva. Moscow: ‘Ekonomika’, 1976.

Oliver H. Radkey, The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia. A Study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920–21. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1976. xiv+457 pp. $12.95.

Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Khrushchev—The Years in Power. London: OUP, 1977. xi+198 pp. £3.95.

Daniel F. Calhoun, The United Front: the TUC and the Russians, 1923–1928. Cambridge: CUP, 1976. 450 pp. £10.50.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Precarious Truce. Anglo‐Soviet Relations 1924–27. Cambridge: CUP, 1977. 289 pp. £9.00.

Herbert S. Dinerstein, The Making of a Missile Crisis: October 1962. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. 302 pp. $14.95.

Donald R. Kelley, Kenneth R. Stunkel, Richard R. Wescott, The Economic Superpowers and the Environment: The United States, The Soviet Union, and Japan. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976. 335 pp.

Fred Singleton (ed.), Environmental Misuse in the Soviet Union. New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 1976. xvii+103 pp. $13.50. £8.80.

Peter H. Juviler, Revolutionary Law and Order. Politics and Social Change in the USSR. New York: The Free Press, and London: Collier MacMillan, 1976. xii+274 pp. £11.05.

Richard Szawlowski, The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1976. 322 pp.

Jürg Meister, Soviet Warships of the Second World War. London: Macdonald & Jane, 1977. 348 pp. £7.95.     

Policy-making and Political Supervision in Shanghai's Financial Industry

This study deals with the political economy of local financial industries in China. It focuses on the changing patterns of political interference and the key role of Communist Party bodies in shaping business incentives. The centralization measures in the financial sector that were implemented under the Zhu Rongji government in 1998 and 1999 turned out to be not very effective in supervising local financial institutions. From 2000 to 2003, a trend towards a reaffirmation of local control in financial business emerged. Local governments began to set up new financial work bodies with comprehensive functions and extensively used local banks as their ‘moneybag’ again. Reducing the risks involved in the current politicized management of local financial business will be inseparable from political, legal and regulatory changes: curbing the Communist Party's role in cadre appointments, strengthening legal corporate governance structures and clarifying the division of labor among national and local supervisory bodies.