Word: knowns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...started in 1997 when a little-known company wanted to patent a method for letting customers of utility companies pay a fixed, predictable sum each month. The patent office rejected their application on the grounds that it was "an abstract idea that simply solves a mathematical problem...
...majority opinion issued in October 2008, the judges wrote that in addition to being something novel and nonobvious, such a patent should be something that "is tied to a particular machine or apparatus" or "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing." This has since been known as the "machine-or-transformation test" and has sent shockwaves through the information-technology industry. (See the Tech Buyer's Guide...
Such "patent trolls" or "patent extortionists", as they've come to be known, have become a big headache, especially for technology companies...
...about a decade, roughly since the FDA approved Viagra for sexual dysfunction in men, drug companies have been searching for the female version of the little blue pill, a drug to cure what ails women like Wendy in bed. But what ails them - a psychiatric condition known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), defined as a distressing lack of sexual desire, absent other medical conditions - has been notoriously difficult to pin down. (See how to prevent illness...
...Sarkozy, whose nose for the political winds is legendary, was once known as Sarko the American when more and more French were looking across the Atlantic to the flexible approach to work and dynamic business environment. But the French President reacted quickly last autumn to the Wall Street implosion by taking the lead in offering an alternative model to the U.S.'s. "The idea of the absolute power of the markets that should not be constrained by any rule, by any political intervention, was a mad idea," he declared in a widely cited speech last September in Toulon...