Blame it on Rio: Biodiscovery, native title, and traditional knowledge

This article examines the legal responses to protect traditional knowledge of biodiversity in the wake of the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity. It considers the relative merits of the inter-locking regimes of contract law, environmental law, intellectual property law, and native title law. Part 1 considers the natural drug discovery industry in Australia. In particular, it looks at the operations of Amrad, Astra Zeneca R & D, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. This section examines the key features of the draft regulations proposed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) - model contracts, informed consent, benefit-sharing, and ministerial discretion. The use of Indigenous Land Use Agreements in the context of access to genetic resources is also explored. Part 2 considers the role played by native title law in dealing with tangible and intangible property interests. The High Court decision in Western Australia v Ward considers the relationship between native title rights and cultural knowledge. The Federal Court case of Neowarra v Western Australia provides an intriguing gloss on this High Court decision. Part 3 looks at whether traditional knowledge of biodiversity can be protected under intellectual property law. It focuses upon reforms such as Senator Aden Ridgeway's proposed amendments to the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994 (Cth), and the push to make disclosure of origin a requirement of patent law.

When Japanese law goes pop

Japanese law is going ‘pop’. Since the turn of the century, Japanese popular culture, especially prime-time television, has dedicated more time to legal themes, characters and settings. Lawyers, overwhelmingly women, are the heroes in both dramatic and comedic television series (Nakamura, 2007). Courtroom battles are the scene for plot developments (Ishikawa, 2004). Practising lawyers are the new celebrities, joining actors and singers on the light entertainment talk show circuit. To be sure, law is not a new thematic preoccupation on Japanese network television. Nor is it one that has become so dominant that it overshadows more traditional genres such as workplace romantic comedies, coming-of-age dramas or family soap operas (eg, Dissanayake, 2012, p._194). But, its growing presence on the silver screen in twenty-first-century Japan is a trend that merits analysis. The purpose of this chapter is to explore that socio-legal significance. This presents theoretical and empirical challenges. Theoretically, is there explanatory potential in the link between law and popular culture in Japan? Empirically, does the greater embrace of law-related characters, plots and scenes in prime-time television series since 2001 provide compelling evidence of changing popular attitudes to law and legal process among Japanese viewers? The inspiration for both the title and theme of this chapter comes from Sherwin’s When Law Goes Pop (2000). But it departs from Sherwin in how it defines and analyses the issues. For Sherwin, ‘pop’ means ‘implosion’.

Should law look east?

How well-equipped is the discipline of law to cope with complex questions arising in the emerging Asian Century? This editorial article reviews how time and space namely, the predominance of European and American power in 19th and 20th centuries have forged an Anglo-American emphasis in traditional disciplines of law, such as comparative law and its more recent cousins of international law and global law. The editorial poses the question of whether this limits the ability of traditional legal disciplines to make sense of complex political, economic and social questions emerging during the Asian Century. It further interrogates whether traditional legal disciplines can be rehabilitated to engage sensibly with Asian legal power or whether a new discipline of ‘Asian Law’ is warranted.

Australian Media Law [5th Edition]

Australian Media Law details and explains the complex case law, legislation and regulations governing media practice in areas as diverse as journalism, advertising, multimedia and broadcasting. It examines the issues affecting traditional forms of media such as television, radio, film and newspapers as well as for recent forms such as the internet, online forums and digital technology, in a clear and accessible format. New additions to the fifth edition include: - the implications of new anti-terrorism legislation for journalists; - developments in privacy law, including Law Reform recommendations for a statutory cause of action to protect personal privacy in Australia and the expanding privacy jurisprudence in the United Kingdom and New Zealand; - liability for defamation of internet search engines and service providers; - the High Court decision in Roadshow v iiNet and the position of internet service providers in relation to copyright infringement via their services; - new suppression order regimes; - statutory reforms providing journalists with a rebuttable presumption of non-disclosure when called upon to reveal their sources in a court of law; - recent developments regarding whether journalists can use electronic devices to collect and disseminate information about court proceedings; - contempt committed by jurors via social media; and an examination of recent decisions on defamation, confidentiality, vilification, copyright and contempt.

Free software and the law. Out of the frying pan and into the fire: How shaking up intellectual property suits competition law just fine

Free software is viewed as a revolutionary and subversive practice, and in particular has dealt a strong blow to the traditional conception of intellectual property law (although in its current form could be considered a 'hack' of IP rights). However, other (capitalist) areas of law have been swift to embrace free software, or at least incorporate it into its own tenets. One area in particular is that of competition (antitrust) law, which itself has long been in theoretical conflict with intellectual property, due to the restriction on competition inherent in the grant of ‘monopoly’ rights by copyrights, patents and trademarks. This contribution will examine how competition law has approached free software by examining instances in which courts have had to deal with such initiatives, for instance in the Oracle Sun Systems merger, and the implications that these decisions have on free software initiatives. The presence or absence of corporate involvement in initiatives will be an important factor in this investigation, with it being posited that true instances of ‘commons-based peer production’ can still subvert the capitalist system, including perplexing its laws beyond intellectual property.

The law and ethics of ‘self-quantified’ health information: An Australian perspective

This exploratory article examines the phenomenon of the ‘Quantified Self’—until recently, a subculture of enthusiasts who aim to discover knowledge about themselves and their bodies through self-tracking, usually using wearable devices to do so—and its implications for laws concerned with regulating and protecting health information. Quantified Self techniques and the ‘wearable devices’ and software that facilitate them—in which large transnational technology corporations are now involved—often involve the gathering of what would be considered ‘health information’ according to legal definitions, yet may occur outside the provision of traditional health services (including ‘e-health’) and the regulatory frameworks that govern them. This article explores the legal and regulatory framework for self-quantified health information and wearable devices in Australia and determines the extent to which this framework addresses privacy and other concerns that these techniques engender, along with suggestions for reform.

The Protection of Traditional Knowledge Associated with Genetic Resources: The Role of Databases and Registers

"The Protection of Traditional Knowledge Associated with Genetic Resources: The Role of Databases and Registers" ABSTRACT Yovana Reyes Tagle The misappropriation of TK has sparked a search for national and international laws to govern the use of indigenous peoples knowledge and protection against its commercial exploitation. There is a widespread perception that biopiracy or illegal access to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge (TK) continues despite national and regional efforts to address this concern. The purpose of this research is to address the question of how documentation of TK through databases and registers could protect TK, in light of indigenous peoples increasing demands to control their knowledge and benefit from its use. Throughout the international debate over the protection of TK, various options have been brought up and discussed. At its core, the discussion over the legal protection of TK comes down to these issues: 1) The doctrinal question: What is protection of TK? 2) The methodological question: How can protection of TK be achieved? 3) The legal question: What should be protected? And 4) The policy questions: Who has rights and how should they be implemented? What kind of rights should indigenous peoples have over their TK? What are the central concerns the TK databases want to solve? The acceptance of TK databases and registers may bring with it both opportunities and dangers. How can the rights of indigenous peoples over their documented knowledge be assured? Documentation of TK was envisaged as a means to protect TK, but there are concerns about how documented TK can be protected from misappropriation. The methodology used in this research seeks to contribute to the understanding of the protection of TK. The steps taken in this research attempt to describe and to explain a) what has been done to protect TK through databases and registers, b) how this protection is taking place, and c) why the establishment of TK databases can or cannot be useful for the protection of TK. The selected case studies (Peru and Venezuela) seek to illustrate the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of the establishment of TK databases, which entail not only legal but also political, socio-economic and cultural issues. The study offers some conclusions and recommendations that have emerged after reviewing the national experiences, international instruments, work of international organizations, and indigenous peoples perspectives. This thesis concludes that if TK is to be protected from disclosure and unauthorized use, confidential databases are required. Finally, the TK database strategy needs to be strengthened by the legal protection of the TK itself.

An adaptive sliding mode control law for the power maximization of the wind turbine system

POWERENG 2011

Addressing students' difficulties with Faraday's law: A guided problem solving approach

In traditional teaching, the fundamental concepts of electromagnetic induction are usually quickly analyzed, spending most of the time solving problems in a more or less rote manner. However, physics education research has shown that the fundamental concepts of the electromagnetic induction theory are barely understood by students. This article proposes an interactive teaching sequence introducing the topic of electromagnetic induction. The sequence has been designed based on contributions from physics education research. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between experimental findings (macroscopic level) and theoretical interpretation (microscopic level). An example of the activities that have been designed will also be presented, describing the implementation context and the corresponding findings. Since implementing the sequence, a considerable number of students have a more satisfactory grasp of the electromagnetic induction explicative model. However, difficulties are manifested in aspects that require a multilevel explanation, referring to deep structures where the system description is better defined.

‘Making Older People Equal: Reforming the Law on Access to Education and Other Services’

Age-based discrimination in the supply of goods and services (including educational services) has only very recently been outlawed in the United Kingdom by the Equality Act 2010, the relevant sections of which have not yet been brought into force. This paper critically considers the Act and its implications, as well as the current proposal for an EU Directive on Goods and Services.The greatest immediate potential of the Equality Act lies in the general prohibition against age discrimination and the scope of the exceptions to it. The paper argues that exceptions permitting service providers to discriminate against older people (i.e. negative exceptions) should be very specifically set out in the reforming legislation.There should be no general defence to a claim of age discrimination based around the concept of ‘reasonableness’, which would not be consistently interpreted by courts and tribunals in a way that steers clear of traditional ageist assumptions and stereotyping.The paper argues that service providers should be permitted to discriminate in favour of older people (i.e. make positive exceptions) if the reason for doing do so satisfi es legislative criteria which are designed, amongst other things, to meet the particular needs of older persons or to promote social inclusion. Under this proposal, preferential treatment such as age-related concessionary fees for adult education courses and programmes would be lawful.

Universal power-law diet partitioning by marine fish and squid with surprising stability–diversity implications

A central question in community ecology is how the number of trophic links relates to community species richness. For simple dynamical food-web models, link density (the ratio of links to species) is bounded from above as the number of species increases; but empirical data suggest that it increases without bounds. We found a new empirical upper bound on link density in large marine communities with emphasis on fish and squid, using novel methods that avoid known sources of bias in traditional approaches. Bounds are expressed in terms of the diet-partitioning function (DPF): the average number of resources contributing more than a fraction f to a consumer's diet, as a function of f. All observed DPF follow a functional form closely related to a power law, with power-law exponents indepen- dent of species richness at the measurement accuracy. Results imply universal upper bounds on link density across the oceans. However, the inherently scale-free nature of power-law diet partitioning suggests that the DPF itself is a better defined characterization of network structure than link density.

European Law and New Health Technologies

Health is a matter of fundamental importance in European societies, both as a human right in itself, and as a factor in a productive workforce and therefore a healthy economy. New health technologies promise improved quality of life for patients suffering from a range of diseases, and the potential for the prevention of incidence of disease in the future. At the same time, new health technologies pose significant challenges for governments, particularly in relation to ensuring the technologies are safe, effective, and provide appropriate value for (public) money.

To guard against the possible dangers arising from new health technologies, and to maximize the benefits, all European governments regulate their development, marketing, and public financing. In addition, several international institutions operating at European level, in particular the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Patent Office, have become involved in the regulation of new health technologies. They have done so both through traditional 'command and control' legal measures, and through other regulatory mechanisms, including guidelines, soft law, 'steering' through redistribution of resources, and private or quasi-private regulation.

This collection analyses European law and its relationships with new health technologies. It uses interdisciplinary insights, particularly from law but also drawing on regulation theory, and science and technology studies, to shed new light on some of the key defining features of the relationships and especially the roles of risk, rights, ethics, and markets. The collection explores the way in which European law's engagement with new health technologies is to be legitimized, and discusses the implications for biological or biomedical citizenship.

Human rights and traditional values

A series of ‘traditional values’ resolutions, passed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, 2011, and 2012, were the result of a highly controversial initiative spearheaded by Russia. Do these ‘traditional values’ underpin human rights? If not, why are religious traditions or, indeed, any traditional values worth preserving at all? Why are they valuable from the point of view of adherents to that tradition? Should the larger society take into account the fact that a practice is based on tradition in deciding whether or not to override it in the name of human rights? Put more technically, in what does the normativity of tradition lie, for adherents and non-adherents of that tradition? These are the questions that this essay explores, in the context of the recent debates over the scope and meaning of human rights stimulated by the Human Rights Council Resolutions. Much of the support for the Resolutions comes from what can broadly be called the global South. In several books, particularly Human Rights, Southern Voices, and General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective William Twining has explored the question of how to reconcile human rights norms and belief systems embedded in the global South (including ‘traditional values’), and in doing so has drawn particular attention to intellectuals from that part of the world, in particular Francis Deng, Yash Ghai, Abdullahi An-Na’im, and Upendra Baxi. I suggest that those concerned to recognize the legitimate concerns that significant sections of the global South have about the human rights project, concerns reflected in the ‘traditional values’ Resolutions would do well to pay more attention to the ‘Southern voices’ on whom Twining rightly focuses attention.

Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical Contexts: Essays in Honour of William Twining

Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical Contexts examines William Twining's principal contributions to law and jurisprudence in the context of three issues which will receive significant scholarly attention over the coming decades. Part I explores human rights, including torture, the role of evidence in human rights cases, the emerging discourse on 'traditional values', the relevance of 'Southern voices' to human rights debates, and the relationship between human rights and peace agreements. Part II assesses the impact of globalization through the lenses of sociology and comparative constitutionalism, and features an analysis of the development of pluralistic ideas of law in the context of privatization. Finally, Part III addresses issues of legal theory, including whether global legal pluralism needs a concept of law, the importance of context in legal interpretation, the effect of increasing digitalization on legal theory, and the utility of feminist and postmodern approaches to globalization and legal theory.