71 research outputs found
The Philosophical Foundations of Investment-Driven IP: On Reason, Faith, and Pluralism
No full textIt seems, once again, that intellectual property law is shifting beneath our feet. As Robert Merges put it a decade ago, if IP were a city, then the old city centre is today ‘surrounded by new buildings and new neighbourhoods, knots of urban growth, budding in every direction, far off into the distance’.1 That old city centre was built during the nineteenth-century age of possessive individualism.2 Ideologies of the romantic author and sole inventor helped erect the city’s foundational principle that one deserves ownership in the products of mental labour.3 Yet, in the early twentieth century, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis could still write that ‘the general rule of law is, that the noblest of human production – knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas – become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use’.4 A century later, that general rule rings less true.5 Investment-driven rights, and investment-driven extensions to old rights, have helped expand the city’s boundaries. What started out as a small cadre of related rights, sui generis rights, and quasi-IP rights now contribute to an urban sprawl of new neighbourhoods spreading as far as the eye can see. New denizens – the trivially creative and insignificantly innovative goods explored in this volume – now are protected inside the city’s walls. What was the city of Intellectual Property has become the city of Investment Property
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Homeostatic Signaling at Central and Peripheral Synapses
No full textThe magnitude and timing of neural activity precisely determines adaptive responses to stimuli. Neural activity is subject to extensive transformation between sensation and motor execution, and this transformation itself is subject to change due to the rewiring of the nervous system during development and learning. In this thesis I present data exploring how synapses between neural circuit elements might be homeostatically regulated, such that activity levels are maintained to ensure effective functioning of the nervous system. Inhibition of postsynaptic glutamate receptors at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction (NMJ) initiates a compensatory increase in presynaptic release termed synaptic homeostasis. This ensures that muscle depolarization stays constant despite diminished postsynaptic function, and this process of synaptic homeostasis may be important for maintaining proper NMJ function throughout development. While BMP signaling has been proposed to mediate the retrograde signal that controls synaptic homeostasis at this synapse, BMP signaling is also necessary for normal synaptic growth and stability. It remains unknown whether BMPs function as instructive retrograde signals that directly modulate presynaptic transmitter release. Here we demonstrate that the BMP receptor (Wit) and ligand (Gbb) are necessary for the induction of synaptic homeostasis, but that Gbb does not function as an instructive retrograde signal. Rather our data indicate that Wit and Gbb function via the downstream transcription factor Mad, and that Mad-mediated signaling is continuously required to gate the expression of synaptic homeostasis in motoneurons. Forms of synaptic plasticity in the central nervous system such as long-term potentiation (LTP) increase synaptic activity in a synapse- and cell-specific fashion. Although network-wide excitation triggers compensatory homeostatic changes, whether vertebrate neurons initiate homeostatic synaptic changes in response to cell-autonomous increases in excitation has not been examined. We cell-autonomously excited rodent CA1 pyramidal neurons and find that a compensatory postsynaptic depression of both AMPAR and NMDAR function results. Elevated calcium influx through L-type calcium channels leads to activation of a pathway involving CaM kinase kinase and CaM kinase 4 that induces synaptic depression of AMPAR and NMDAR responses. The synaptic depression of AMPARs but not of NMDARs requires protein synthesis and the GluA2 AMPAR subunit
Corrective Justice and Copyright Infringement
No full textThis article demonstrates that one crucially important function of copyright infringement cases is corrective justice. However, because scholars and lawmakers often conceive of copyright in solely economic terms, this goal is often overlooked and demonstrable unfairness occurs as a result.
The article uses tort law theory to make three points. Firstly, the economic theory of copyright is incomplete. This theory states that copyright is a tool for providing authors with incentives to create new works. However, this goal does not explain the legal relationship between the author and the infringer. If all we want to do is give authors incentives, then all we need to do is reward creation. Government subsidies and prizes are examples of methods for incentivizing creation without requiring the author to sue the infringer.
Secondly, corrective justice is a function of copyright infringement cases. This explains the author-infringer relationship. Corrective justice maintains equality between people. People are equally entitled to their rights. When someone does not respect the rights of others they cause an inequality. The wrongdoer gains something and the victim loses something. By making the wrongdoer compensate the victim, the law removes the gain and loss and restores the antecedent equality. This is one basic function of copyright infringement cases. Copyright is provided for a mix of reasons (some economic, some based on natural rights). Thereafter, when someone infringes copyright, they cause an inequality to arise: the infringer gains the ability to copy without paying a license fee, while the author loses the work’s market value. Making the infringer compensate the author removes the gains and losses and restores the equality between the parties.
Finally, this important goal it is often overlooked. The article will demonstrate three cases where the law does not adequately restore the equality between author and infringer, and which are accordingly unfair. The examples are: statutory damages for wilful infringement, litigation fees, and mass copyright infringement suits
Single-Cell Optogenetic Excitation Drives Homeostatic Synaptic Depression
No full textSummaryHomeostatic processes have been proposed to explain the discrepancy between the dynamics of synaptic plasticity and the stability of brain function. Forms of synaptic plasticity such as long-term potentiation alter synaptic activity in a synapse- and cell-specific fashion. Although network-wide excitation triggers compensatory homeostatic changes, it is unknown whether neurons initiate homeostatic synaptic changes in response to cell-autonomous increases in excitation. Here we employ optogenetic tools to cell-autonomously excite CA1 pyramidal neurons and find that a compensatory postsynaptic depression of both AMPAR and NMDAR function results. Elevated calcium influx through L-type calcium channels leads to activation of a pathway involving CaM kinase kinase and CaM kinase 4 that induces synaptic depression of AMPAR and NMDAR responses. The synaptic depression of AMPARs but not of NMDARs requires protein synthesis and the GluA2 AMPAR subunit, indicating that downstream of CaM kinase activation divergent pathways regulate homeostatic AMPAR and NMDAR depression
The BMP Ligand Gbb Gates the Expression of Synaptic Homeostasis Independent of Synaptic Growth Control
No full textSummaryInhibition of postsynaptic glutamate receptors at the Drosophila NMJ initiates a compensatory increase in presynaptic release termed synaptic homeostasis. BMP signaling is necessary for normal synaptic growth and stability. It remains unknown whether BMPs have a specific role during synaptic homeostasis and, if so, whether BMP signaling functions as an instructive retrograde signal that directly modulates presynaptic transmitter release. Here, we demonstrate that the BMP receptor (Wit) and ligand (Gbb) are necessary for the rapid induction of synaptic homeostasis. We also provide evidence that both Wit and Gbb have functions during synaptic homeostasis that are separable from NMJ growth. However, further genetic experiments demonstrate that Gbb does not function as an instructive retrograde signal during synaptic homeostasis. Rather, our data indicate that Wit and Gbb function via the downstream transcription factor Mad and that Mad-mediated signaling is continuously required during development to confer competence of motoneurons to express synaptic homeostasis
An Advanced Placement
No full textMFA theses in English Language and Literature are not available for direct download. Users wishing to access an MFA thesis in this collection may request access by clicking the link to the restricted file(s) and completing the request form. If we have contact information for the author, we will contact them and request permission to provide access. If we do not have contact information or the author denies or does not respond to our inquiry, we will not be able to provide access.The following is a collection of poems experimenting with the mutable permanence of memory, time, space, and personhood within my childhood home, a small working farm in Central Illinois. The poems serve as both record and instantiation of what transpired in my gathering of self, observing family and what shatters are essential to my identities. There's play as much as study, as neither can exist without the other in earnest.10000-01-0
The Curious Case of Computer-Generated Works under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
No full textUnder section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, works that are ‘computer-generated’ (and which have no human author) will be protected by copyright. Ownership of the copyright vests in the person who has made the necessary ‘arrangements’ for the work’s creation. This article introduces two questions in relation to section 9(3). Firstly, how does the section fit with copyright’s originality requirement? Secondly, what is the justification for the provision? In exploring these questions the article develops a novel criticism of section 9(3): the section is either unnecessary or unjustifiably extends legal protection to a class of works which belong in the public domain. While previous literature has praised section 9(3) and suggested that it ought to be adopted more widely, this article concludes that other jurisdictions ought to think carefully before adopting this provision
Intellectual Property's Faith-Based Empiricism
No full textIn recent decades, researchers have produced numerous studies failing to find a positive correlation between IP rights and improved measures of social utility. Based on these findings, a number of scholars argue that society ought to grant fewer and narrower IP rights in the future. One scholar, Professor Mark Lemley (‘Faith-Based Intellectual Property’ (2016) 62 UCLA L Rev 1328) claims that supporting the status quo with natural rights arguments is irrational and displays a quasi-religious ‘faith’ in IP law. This essay considers the epistemological foundations of Lemley’s ‘faith-based’ critique of natural rights arguments in IP law. Assuming that natural rights arguments are based on faith, are empirical-utilitarian arguments any more rational? This essay claims that empirical-utilitarian arguments also rest on irrational faith. Lawyers who base policy decisions on empirical IP studies are, like the present author, ‘faith-based empiricists’ when it comes to IP and utility
Why the U.K. Adaptation Right Is Superior to the U.S. Derivative Work Right
No full textThe author’s exclusive right to prepare derivative works is one of the most maligned doctrines in modern U.S. copyright. Lying at the root of this dissatisfaction is the Copyright Act’s expansive conception of derivative works. The statute defines this term as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgement, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.” Courts apply the final clause of this definition (i.e. the “in any other form” language) very broadly, thus allowing the author control over an ever-expanding range of new adaptations. Given the controversy caused by the derivative works right, it is time to consider how other nations deal with this issue. This Article suggests that when reforming the derivative works right, the U.S. should adopt a rule-based approach, like the U.K. In 1976, the U.S. adopted a standard-based derivative work right, hoping this would enable the law to flexibly extend over new, unforeseeable derivative works that may arise in the future. In contrast, the U.K. worried that a general adaptation right may lead to excessively broad law. Therefore, the U.K. narrowly tailored their adaptation right and tried to find flexibility to deal with novel adaptations elsewhere in the copyright system. Using economic literature on the comparative efficiency of rules and standards, this Article demonstrates how the U.K.’s approach was ultimately more efficient. Since enacting the Copyright Act 1976, U.S. law has become excessively broad. The lack of limits on the derivative work concept allowed authors to exclude many new welfare-enhancing works from the market. At the same time, the vagueness inherent in the standard-based approach makes application of the law much more complicated, time consuming, and costly. The U.K. avoided these problems by adopting a precise, rule-based approach to derivative works. As a result, the perturbations surrounding the U.S. derivative works right do not exist in the U.K. Part I of this Article explains why the U.K. and U.S. adopted different approaches to the derivative works right. Part II shows how this decision to adopt different approaches eventually led to different case outcomes. Part III compares the two approaches using economic literature on legal rules and standards. Doing so demonstrates how the U.S. standard-based approach is substantively too broad and procedurally too costly. Part IV considers some potential solutions to remedy the inefficiencies in U.S. law. This Article contends that the U.S. should make a statutory amendment to the Copyright Act and adopt a rule-based approach, much like that found in the U.K. Part V concludes
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