Word: patents
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...first U.S. patent law, passed in 1790, protected the invention of "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine or device, or any improvement thereon not before known or used." But are items of manufacture necessarily inanimate? Apparently not. In 1930, Congress voted to approve the patenting of new plants produced by grafts, cuttings or other asexual methods. Half a century later the Supreme Court went even further and ruled that the law would apply to genetically engineered micro-organisms, such as a new strain of bacteria designed to gobble up oil spills. In the view of the court, "anything under...
...Patent and Trademark Office has taken what seems to be the next logical step. It announced this month that it "considers non-naturally occurring nonhuman multicellular living organisms, including animals, to be patentable subject matter...
...will describe the new material and details of how it was developed in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, but the University of Houston has already applied for a patent on both product and process. If it is granted, Chu stands to share in the profits, which could be large. "It's phenomenal -- we're excited," says Robert Jake of American Magnetics, a manufacturer of superconducting magnets. "But it will take several years of research and development to make it feasible for commercial application." When such applications come, says Chu, they will make clear the significance of his discovery...
...with any similarity between the two crimes. In fact, on one level, Watergate doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Contra funding. Watergate involved petty squabbles between political parties while the Contra funding was a gross usurpation of Congress' power of the purse, a patent violation of the Constitution...
What makes this response so astounding is that the cause of the accident couldn't be more patent. The suspect, Brian Confoy, alledgedly got rip-roaring drunk, seated himself behind the wheel of his car, and drove with reckless abandon, mowing down Ms. Steel in the process...