RTI Fellowship- Bihar
Via: protima pandey
Chef Sues Over Intellectual Property (the Menu)
Via: "Prabhu Ram"
>From the NYTimes
Chef Sues Over Intellectual Property (the Menu)
By PETE WELLS
Sometimes, Rebecca Charles wishes she were a little less influential.
She was, she asserts, the first chef in New York who took lobster
rolls, fried clams and other sturdy utility players of New England
seafood cookery and lifted them to all-star status on her menu. Since
opening Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village 10 years ago, she has
ruefully watched the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers
"knockoffs" of her own.
Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan
against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed
McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed's Lobster Bar in SoHo and her
sous-chef at Pearl for six years.
The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland
and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed's Lobster Bar copies "each
and every element" of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble
bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with
their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each
table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.
Mr. McFarland would not comment on the complaint, saying that he had
not seen it yet. But he said that Ed's Lobster Bar, which opened in
March, was no imitator.
"I would say it's a similar restaurant," he said, "I would not say it's a copy."
Lawyers for Ms. Charles, 53, said that what Ed's Lobster Bar had done
amounted to theft of her intellectual property — the kind of claim
more often seen in publishing and entertainment, or among giant
restaurant chains protecting their brand.
In recent years, a handful of chefs and restaurateurs have invoked
intellectual property concepts, including trademarks, patents and
trade dress — the distinctive look and feel of a business — to defend
their restaurants, their techniques and even their recipes, but most
have stopped short of a courtroom. The Pearl Oyster Bar suit may be
the most aggressive use of those concepts by the owner of a small
restaurant. Some legal experts believe the number of cases will grow
as chefs begin to think more like chief executives.
Charles Valauskas, a lawyer in Chicago who represents a number of
restaurants and chefs in intellectual property matters, called their
discovery of intellectual property law "long overdue" and attributed
it to greater competition as well as the high cost of opening a
restaurant.
"Now the stakes are so high," he said. "The average restaurant can be
millions of dollars. If I were an investor I'd want to do something to
make sure my investment is protected."
Ms. Charles's investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for
about $120,000 — a cost that in today's market qualifies as an
early-bird special.
She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow,
unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she
had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her
restaurant's look, feel and menu.
Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by
her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the
seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.
"My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my
family," she said. "That restaurant is me."
Mr. McFarland, she said, had unfairly profited from all the thought
she had put into building Pearl. "To have that handed to you, so you
don't have to make those decisions — it's unfair," she said.
But the detail that seems to gnaw at her most is a $7 appetizer on Mr.
McFarland's menu: "Ed's Caesar."
She has never eaten it, but she and her lawyers claim it is made from
her own Caesar salad recipe, which calls for a coddled egg and English
muffin croutons.
She learned it from her mother, who extracted it decades ago from the
chef at a long-gone Los Angeles restaurant. It became a kind of
signature at Pearl. And although she taught Mr. McFarland how to make
it, she said she had guarded the recipe more closely than some
restaurateurs watch their wine cellars.
"When I taught him, I said, 'You will never make this anywhere else,'
" she insisted. According to lawyers for Ms. Charles, the Caesar salad
recipe is a trade secret and Mr. McFarland had no more business taking
it with him after he left than a Coca-Cola employee entrusted with the
formula for Diet Coke.
Mr. McFarland called the allegation that he was a Caesar salad thief
"a pretty ridiculous claim."
"I have my own recipes for my items," he said.
Asked to elaborate on the differences between his restaurant and
Pearl, Mr. McFarland said: "I'd say it's a lot more upscale than
Pearl. A lot neater, a lot cleaner and a lot nicer looking." Ed's
Lobster Bar incorporates novel features like a raw bar and a skylight,
he said; as for the white marble bar, he said one could be seen in
"every raw bar" in Boston, where he had done "additional homework in
designing the dining room."
Calling the lawsuit "a complete shock to me," Mr. McFarland went on to
say: "I just find it interesting that she'd want to draw attention to
the fact that she's bringing a lawsuit against me that's just going to
bring more business my way. I personally have nothing to be concerned
about, in my opinion."
Other chefs, however, are taking intellectual property rights seriously.
One of Mr. Valauskas's clients, Homaro Cantu, has applied for patents
on a number of his culinary inventions, like a method for printing
pictures of food on flavored, edible paper. Mr. Cantu also makes his
cooks sign a nondisclosure agreement before they so much as boil water
at Moto, his restaurant in Chicago.
Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said that this almost
seemed an inevitable result of bringing lawyers into the kitchen. "The
first thing a lawyer would say is have all your people sign
nondisclosure agreements," he said. "It's a classic American marriage
between food and law."
Few chefs have followed Mr. Cantu's footsteps all the way to the
Patent and Trademark Office. One who did is David Burke, the chef at
David Burke & Donatella, on the Upper East Side and other restaurants.
He said he had trademarked a "swordfish chop" and "salmon pastrami"
but no longer tried to defend those terms from copycats.
"You've got to chase people down if they use it. I got tired of it,"
he said. But he said he still applied for trademarks on more recent
innovations, like his bacon-flavored spray.
Many chefs are skeptical that intellectual property law conforms to
their line of work. Tom Colicchio said that he had decided not to do
anything about a sandwich shop that he considers a clone of his
sandwich chain, 'Wichcraft. "There's nothing you can do," he said.
"You can't protect recipes, you can't protect what a place looks like,
it's impossible."
But Ms. Charles is willing to spend some time and money to prove her
point. (She once sued the partner she opened Pearl with, Mary Redding,
in an ownership dispute. Ms. Redding went on to open her own West
Village seafood restaurant, Mary's Fish Camp.)
Ms. Charles has come to think that if this case forces Ed's Lobster
Bar to change until it no longer resembles Pearl Oyster Bar, it could
be the most influential thing she has ever done.
"I thought if I could have success with this lawsuit, that could be an
important contribution," she said. "If some guy in California is
having problems, he could go to his lawyer and look at this case and
say, 'Maybe we can do something about it.' "
>From the NYTimes
Chef Sues Over Intellectual Property (the Menu)
By PETE WELLS
Sometimes, Rebecca Charles wishes she were a little less influential.
She was, she asserts, the first chef in New York who took lobster
rolls, fried clams and other sturdy utility players of New England
seafood cookery and lifted them to all-star status on her menu. Since
opening Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village 10 years ago, she has
ruefully watched the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers
"knockoffs" of her own.
Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan
against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed
McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed's Lobster Bar in SoHo and her
sous-chef at Pearl for six years.
The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland
and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed's Lobster Bar copies "each
and every element" of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble
bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with
their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each
table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.
Mr. McFarland would not comment on the complaint, saying that he had
not seen it yet. But he said that Ed's Lobster Bar, which opened in
March, was no imitator.
"I would say it's a similar restaurant," he said, "I would not say it's a copy."
Lawyers for Ms. Charles, 53, said that what Ed's Lobster Bar had done
amounted to theft of her intellectual property — the kind of claim
more often seen in publishing and entertainment, or among giant
restaurant chains protecting their brand.
In recent years, a handful of chefs and restaurateurs have invoked
intellectual property concepts, including trademarks, patents and
trade dress — the distinctive look and feel of a business — to defend
their restaurants, their techniques and even their recipes, but most
have stopped short of a courtroom. The Pearl Oyster Bar suit may be
the most aggressive use of those concepts by the owner of a small
restaurant. Some legal experts believe the number of cases will grow
as chefs begin to think more like chief executives.
Charles Valauskas, a lawyer in Chicago who represents a number of
restaurants and chefs in intellectual property matters, called their
discovery of intellectual property law "long overdue" and attributed
it to greater competition as well as the high cost of opening a
restaurant.
"Now the stakes are so high," he said. "The average restaurant can be
millions of dollars. If I were an investor I'd want to do something to
make sure my investment is protected."
Ms. Charles's investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for
about $120,000 — a cost that in today's market qualifies as an
early-bird special.
She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow,
unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she
had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her
restaurant's look, feel and menu.
Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by
her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the
seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.
"My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my
family," she said. "That restaurant is me."
Mr. McFarland, she said, had unfairly profited from all the thought
she had put into building Pearl. "To have that handed to you, so you
don't have to make those decisions — it's unfair," she said.
But the detail that seems to gnaw at her most is a $7 appetizer on Mr.
McFarland's menu: "Ed's Caesar."
She has never eaten it, but she and her lawyers claim it is made from
her own Caesar salad recipe, which calls for a coddled egg and English
muffin croutons.
She learned it from her mother, who extracted it decades ago from the
chef at a long-gone Los Angeles restaurant. It became a kind of
signature at Pearl. And although she taught Mr. McFarland how to make
it, she said she had guarded the recipe more closely than some
restaurateurs watch their wine cellars.
"When I taught him, I said, 'You will never make this anywhere else,'
" she insisted. According to lawyers for Ms. Charles, the Caesar salad
recipe is a trade secret and Mr. McFarland had no more business taking
it with him after he left than a Coca-Cola employee entrusted with the
formula for Diet Coke.
Mr. McFarland called the allegation that he was a Caesar salad thief
"a pretty ridiculous claim."
"I have my own recipes for my items," he said.
Asked to elaborate on the differences between his restaurant and
Pearl, Mr. McFarland said: "I'd say it's a lot more upscale than
Pearl. A lot neater, a lot cleaner and a lot nicer looking." Ed's
Lobster Bar incorporates novel features like a raw bar and a skylight,
he said; as for the white marble bar, he said one could be seen in
"every raw bar" in Boston, where he had done "additional homework in
designing the dining room."
Calling the lawsuit "a complete shock to me," Mr. McFarland went on to
say: "I just find it interesting that she'd want to draw attention to
the fact that she's bringing a lawsuit against me that's just going to
bring more business my way. I personally have nothing to be concerned
about, in my opinion."
Other chefs, however, are taking intellectual property rights seriously.
One of Mr. Valauskas's clients, Homaro Cantu, has applied for patents
on a number of his culinary inventions, like a method for printing
pictures of food on flavored, edible paper. Mr. Cantu also makes his
cooks sign a nondisclosure agreement before they so much as boil water
at Moto, his restaurant in Chicago.
Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said that this almost
seemed an inevitable result of bringing lawyers into the kitchen. "The
first thing a lawyer would say is have all your people sign
nondisclosure agreements," he said. "It's a classic American marriage
between food and law."
Few chefs have followed Mr. Cantu's footsteps all the way to the
Patent and Trademark Office. One who did is David Burke, the chef at
David Burke & Donatella, on the Upper East Side and other restaurants.
He said he had trademarked a "swordfish chop" and "salmon pastrami"
but no longer tried to defend those terms from copycats.
"You've got to chase people down if they use it. I got tired of it,"
he said. But he said he still applied for trademarks on more recent
innovations, like his bacon-flavored spray.
Many chefs are skeptical that intellectual property law conforms to
their line of work. Tom Colicchio said that he had decided not to do
anything about a sandwich shop that he considers a clone of his
sandwich chain, 'Wichcraft. "There's nothing you can do," he said.
"You can't protect recipes, you can't protect what a place looks like,
it's impossible."
But Ms. Charles is willing to spend some time and money to prove her
point. (She once sued the partner she opened Pearl with, Mary Redding,
in an ownership dispute. Ms. Redding went on to open her own West
Village seafood restaurant, Mary's Fish Camp.)
Ms. Charles has come to think that if this case forces Ed's Lobster
Bar to change until it no longer resembles Pearl Oyster Bar, it could
be the most influential thing she has ever done.
"I thought if I could have success with this lawsuit, that could be an
important contribution," she said. "If some guy in California is
having problems, he could go to his lawyer and look at this case and
say, 'Maybe we can do something about it.' "
Profits in Biowarfare Research
Via: Ananth
June 22, 2007
The Big Profits in Biowarfare Research Corporate America's Deadliest
Secret
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross06222007.html
By SHERWOOD ROSS
A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are
concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they
are doing for the U.S. government.
Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the
recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their
activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they
may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research.
According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog
operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back
information about their activities are:
Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont
Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex,
GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc.,
Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.
In case you didn't know it, the White House since 9/11 has called for
spending $44-billion on biological warfare research, a sum
unprecedented in world history, and an obliging Congress has
authorized it.
Thus, some of the deadliest pathogens known to humankind are being
rekindled in hundreds of labs in pharmaceutical houses, university
biology departments, and on military bases.
An international convention the U.S. signed forbids it to stockpile,
manufacture or use biological weapons. But if the U.S. won't say
what's going down in those laboratories other countries are going to
assume the worst and a biowarfare arms race will be on, if it isn't
already.
Sunshine says failure to disclose operations also puts corporate
employees involved in this work at risk. Only 8,500, or 16%, of the
52,000 workers employed at the top 20 U.S. biotech firms work at an
NIH guidelines-compliant company, Sunshine says.
Francis Boyle, an international law authority at the University of
Illinois, Champaign, says pursuant to national strategy directives
adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and
win' biological warfare without prior public knowledge and review."
Boyle said the Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was
revised in 2003 to endorse "first-use" strike in war. Boyle said the
program includes Red Teaming, which he described as "plotting,
planning, and scheming how to use biowarfare."
Besides the big pharmaceutical houses, the biowarfare buildup is
getting an enthusiastic response from academia, which sees new funds
flowing from Washington's horn of plenty. "American universities have
a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda,
researchers, institutes and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted,
and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA," Boyle says.
What's more, the Bush administration is pouring billions in
biowarfare research while some very real killers, such as influenza,
are not being cured.
In 2006, the NIH got $120 million to combat influenza, which kills
about 36,000 Americans annually but it got $1.76 billion for
biodefense, much of it spent to research anthrax. How many people has
anthrax killed lately? Well, let's see, there were those five people
killed in the mysterious attacks on Congress of October, 2001 ---
attacks that suspiciously emanated from a government laboratory at
Fort Detrick, Md.
One would think the FBI might apprehend the perpetrator whose attack
shut down the Congress of the United States but nearly six years have
gone by and it hasn't caught anybody. Seem a bit odd to you? Some
folks suspect the anthrax attack was an inside job to panic the
country into a huge biowarfare buildup to "protect" America from
"terrorists."
Milton Leitenberg, of the University of Maryland's School of Public
Policy, though, says the risk of terrorists and nonstate actors using
biological agents against the U.S. "has been systematically and
deliberately exaggerated" by administration scare-mongering.
And molecular biologist Jonathan King of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology says, "the Bush administration launched a major program
which threatens to put the health of our people at far greater risk
than the hazard to which they claimed to have been responding." King
added President Bush's policies "do not increase the security of the
American people" but "bring new risk to our population of the most
appalling kind."
In the absence of any credible foreign threat, Sunshine's Hammond
said, "Our biowarfare research is defending ourselves from ourselves.
It's a dog chasing its tail." Sadly, it looks more and more every day
like a mad dog.
Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for major dailies and wire
services. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
June 22, 2007
The Big Profits in Biowarfare Research Corporate America's Deadliest
Secret
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross06222007.html
By SHERWOOD ROSS
A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are
concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they
are doing for the U.S. government.
Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the
recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their
activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they
may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research.
According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog
operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back
information about their activities are:
Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont
Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex,
GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc.,
Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.
In case you didn't know it, the White House since 9/11 has called for
spending $44-billion on biological warfare research, a sum
unprecedented in world history, and an obliging Congress has
authorized it.
Thus, some of the deadliest pathogens known to humankind are being
rekindled in hundreds of labs in pharmaceutical houses, university
biology departments, and on military bases.
An international convention the U.S. signed forbids it to stockpile,
manufacture or use biological weapons. But if the U.S. won't say
what's going down in those laboratories other countries are going to
assume the worst and a biowarfare arms race will be on, if it isn't
already.
Sunshine says failure to disclose operations also puts corporate
employees involved in this work at risk. Only 8,500, or 16%, of the
52,000 workers employed at the top 20 U.S. biotech firms work at an
NIH guidelines-compliant company, Sunshine says.
Francis Boyle, an international law authority at the University of
Illinois, Champaign, says pursuant to national strategy directives
adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and
win' biological warfare without prior public knowledge and review."
Boyle said the Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was
revised in 2003 to endorse "first-use" strike in war. Boyle said the
program includes Red Teaming, which he described as "plotting,
planning, and scheming how to use biowarfare."
Besides the big pharmaceutical houses, the biowarfare buildup is
getting an enthusiastic response from academia, which sees new funds
flowing from Washington's horn of plenty. "American universities have
a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda,
researchers, institutes and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted,
and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA," Boyle says.
What's more, the Bush administration is pouring billions in
biowarfare research while some very real killers, such as influenza,
are not being cured.
In 2006, the NIH got $120 million to combat influenza, which kills
about 36,000 Americans annually but it got $1.76 billion for
biodefense, much of it spent to research anthrax. How many people has
anthrax killed lately? Well, let's see, there were those five people
killed in the mysterious attacks on Congress of October, 2001 ---
attacks that suspiciously emanated from a government laboratory at
Fort Detrick, Md.
One would think the FBI might apprehend the perpetrator whose attack
shut down the Congress of the United States but nearly six years have
gone by and it hasn't caught anybody. Seem a bit odd to you? Some
folks suspect the anthrax attack was an inside job to panic the
country into a huge biowarfare buildup to "protect" America from
"terrorists."
Milton Leitenberg, of the University of Maryland's School of Public
Policy, though, says the risk of terrorists and nonstate actors using
biological agents against the U.S. "has been systematically and
deliberately exaggerated" by administration scare-mongering.
And molecular biologist Jonathan King of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology says, "the Bush administration launched a major program
which threatens to put the health of our people at far greater risk
than the hazard to which they claimed to have been responding." King
added President Bush's policies "do not increase the security of the
American people" but "bring new risk to our population of the most
appalling kind."
In the absence of any credible foreign threat, Sunshine's Hammond
said, "Our biowarfare research is defending ourselves from ourselves.
It's a dog chasing its tail." Sadly, it looks more and more every day
like a mad dog.
Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for major dailies and wire
services. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
Re Democracy, Political Dissent, and Repressive Laws: A Seminar
Via: Arvind Narrain
Indian democracy ever since the coming into force of
the Indian Constitution has had two faces. One face
which has been repeatedly celebrated and eulogized is
as the 'largest democratic experiment in history'. The
other face which remains hidden is the existence of
several repressive laws and state administrative
practices which raise the question as to whether
democracy has established deep roots in India.
The recent arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen of the
PUCL-Chattisgarh has brought to the fore the important
question as to what does democracy mean when it is
practiced under the ever present shadow of state
repression. Dr. Binayak Sen is a medical doctor who
has been actively involved in reaching health care to
the poorest people as well as monitoring the health
and nutrition status of the people of Chhattisgarh.
He has also been a strong advocate of human rights and
has often exposed the Chattisgarh state's serious
violation of human rights.
Dr Sen's vigorous opposition to the
anti-constitutional acts of murder by the state
government of Chattisgarh has exposed him to the full
fury of state retribution with the government
arresting him on charges of conspiracy to wage war
against the state and sedition, among others.
Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka, is
organizing this seminar on 1 July 2007 which will
focus on repressive laws and provisions and
administrative state practices like the 'encounter
killing'. This seminar is being held in the wake of
the observance of the emergency all over the country
on 26 June.
We hope to raise serious questions about the nature
of Indian democracy. It is only by repealing these
laws and by ensuring that the state desists from acts
of murder that the hollowed out shell of Indian
democracy can live up to its more substantive
Constitutional promise.
Seminar Programme
Date: 1 July 2007 (Sunday)
Time: 10.30a.m.-5.30 p.m Venue: YMCA, Bangalore
Inaugural Lecture: Prof. G. Ramakrishna
Session 1: The Arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen
Speakers: 1.Dr. Ravi Narayan, Advisor, Peoples Health
Movement
2. Dr.Bela Bhatia, Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies
3. Dr. V. Lakshminarayana, PUCL-Karnataka
Session 2. Repressive Laws and Democracy:
Speakers: 1. Shri Shivsundar, Journalist, Lankesh
Varapatrike
2. Dr. Seetharam Kakarala, Centre for the Study of
Culture and Society, Bangalore
Lunch
Session 3. Encounter Killings as State Policy
Speakers: 1. Dr. V.S. Sreedhara PDF
Session 4. Defending Human Rights Defenders
Speakers: 1. Dr. K. Balagopal, HRF, Andhra Pradesh
2. Shri K. Vithal Hegde , Kudremukh National Park
Virodha Horata Sanghatane
You are cordially invited
Hasan Mansur
President, PUCL-Karnataka, Bangalore
Did you know? You can CHAT without downloading messenger. Go to http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php
Indian democracy ever since the coming into force of
the Indian Constitution has had two faces. One face
which has been repeatedly celebrated and eulogized is
as the 'largest democratic experiment in history'. The
other face which remains hidden is the existence of
several repressive laws and state administrative
practices which raise the question as to whether
democracy has established deep roots in India.
The recent arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen of the
PUCL-Chattisgarh has brought to the fore the important
question as to what does democracy mean when it is
practiced under the ever present shadow of state
repression. Dr. Binayak Sen is a medical doctor who
has been actively involved in reaching health care to
the poorest people as well as monitoring the health
and nutrition status of the people of Chhattisgarh.
He has also been a strong advocate of human rights and
has often exposed the Chattisgarh state's serious
violation of human rights.
Dr Sen's vigorous opposition to the
anti-constitutional acts of murder by the state
government of Chattisgarh has exposed him to the full
fury of state retribution with the government
arresting him on charges of conspiracy to wage war
against the state and sedition, among others.
Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka, is
organizing this seminar on 1 July 2007 which will
focus on repressive laws and provisions and
administrative state practices like the 'encounter
killing'. This seminar is being held in the wake of
the observance of the emergency all over the country
on 26 June.
We hope to raise serious questions about the nature
of Indian democracy. It is only by repealing these
laws and by ensuring that the state desists from acts
of murder that the hollowed out shell of Indian
democracy can live up to its more substantive
Constitutional promise.
Seminar Programme
Date: 1 July 2007 (Sunday)
Time: 10.30a.m.-5.30 p.m Venue: YMCA, Bangalore
Inaugural Lecture: Prof. G. Ramakrishna
Session 1: The Arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen
Speakers: 1.Dr. Ravi Narayan, Advisor, Peoples Health
Movement
2. Dr.Bela Bhatia, Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies
3. Dr. V. Lakshminarayana, PUCL-Karnataka
Session 2. Repressive Laws and Democracy:
Speakers: 1. Shri Shivsundar, Journalist, Lankesh
Varapatrike
2. Dr. Seetharam Kakarala, Centre for the Study of
Culture and Society, Bangalore
Lunch
Session 3. Encounter Killings as State Policy
Speakers: 1. Dr. V.S. Sreedhara PDF
Session 4. Defending Human Rights Defenders
Speakers: 1. Dr. K. Balagopal, HRF, Andhra Pradesh
2. Shri K. Vithal Hegde , Kudremukh National Park
Virodha Horata Sanghatane
You are cordially invited
Hasan Mansur
President, PUCL-Karnataka, Bangalore
Did you know? You can CHAT without downloading messenger. Go to http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php
Kerala Gazette goes online
Via: "Prashant Iyengar"
Date:26/06/2007 URL:
http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/26/stories/2007062652730200.htm
Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram
Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Gazette has gone online. All
notifications and government orders published in the gazette can now
be viewed on the portal www.egazette.kerala.gov.in.
With this, Kerala has become the first State to offer the facility.
Notifications in Malayalam and English can be viewed on the site. The
online version will also have an archive of five back issues. Chief
Minister V.S.Achuthanandan inaugurated the online version of the
gazette here.
Director of Printing M. Archangelo said the online version of the
gazette was conceived and executed with the objective of making it
easier for the public to access information on notifications and
government orders. "A publication in the gazette is mandatory for
various official purposes like a change of name or religion,
correction of caste or issue of heirship certificate.
As many as 2600 copies of the printed gazette are published every
Tuesday. A copy is priced at Rs.64. The online version of the gazette
will be available on the site on Tuesday itself.
The public can download the information from the portal.
(c) Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Date:26/06/2007 URL:
http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/26/stories/2007062652730200.htm
Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram
Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Gazette has gone online. All
notifications and government orders published in the gazette can now
be viewed on the portal www.egazette.kerala.gov.in.
With this, Kerala has become the first State to offer the facility.
Notifications in Malayalam and English can be viewed on the site. The
online version will also have an archive of five back issues. Chief
Minister V.S.Achuthanandan inaugurated the online version of the
gazette here.
Director of Printing M. Archangelo said the online version of the
gazette was conceived and executed with the objective of making it
easier for the public to access information on notifications and
government orders. "A publication in the gazette is mandatory for
various official purposes like a change of name or religion,
correction of caste or issue of heirship certificate.
As many as 2600 copies of the printed gazette are published every
Tuesday. A copy is priced at Rs.64. The online version of the gazette
will be available on the site on Tuesday itself.
The public can download the information from the portal.
(c) Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
Re: [Commons-Law] [Reader-list] dutch-indian cybercrime
Via: Patrice Riemens
As an aside to Geert's posting it might be interesting to know that two
Dutch providers, who are hosting the websites of undermentionned NGOs have
been dragged to court in Bangalore as well: XS4ALL (http://www.xs4all.nl)
and Antenna (http://www.antenna.nl). Both maintain that (i) as providers
they are merely carriers and not content providers (the 'post office
argument') and (ii) it is up to the Indian aggrieved party to prove that
the allegedly infringing sites are prosecutable under _Dutch_ law, or
under international law and/or conventions. The former is surely not the
case, and as India is not signatory of the cybercrime convention, the
latter is not even arguable.
On Sun, Jun 24, 2007 at 08:52:35AM +0200, geert lovink wrote:
> Dutch NGOs summoned by Bangalore court
>
> INDIA-SAARC
> 23 June 2007 - Issue : 735
>
> Two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) based in the Netherlands were
> asked to appear before a court in Bangalore on June 25. They are
> accused of ?cybercrime, acts of racist and xenophobic nature and
> criminal defamation,? according to the NGO?s pres release. The two
> organizations are the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and the India
> Committee of the Netherlands (ICN).
>
> The former is an international network of trade unions and NGOs, the
> latter an independent NGO, based on solidarity with deprived groups in
> Indian society. They have been raising public ?awareness of serious
> labour rights? violations? at jeans suppliers Fibres and Fabrics
> International and its wholly-owned subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt. Ltd
> (FFI/JKPL).
>
> This is the first time that a factory has filed suit against the CCC
> and ICN for publishing information on working conditions in the garment
> industry on their respective websites, their press release points out.
>
> Their information was based on interviews with workers conducted in
> 2005 and 2006, and backed up by a fact-finding mission of seven human
> rights? and women?s rights organisations.
>
> Since July 2006 the Garment and Textile Workers? Union (GATWU), the New
> Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), the Civil Initiative for Peace and
> Development (CIVIDEP), the Women Garment Workers? Front Munnade and the
> CCC Task Force Tamil Naidu have been prohibited from distributing
> information on working conditions at FFI/JKPL inside and outside India.
>
> ?Suing all human rights organizations that report about working
> conditions in the garment industry in Bangalore will not solve
> anything,? according to Esther de Haan, of the CCC International
> Secretariat and one of the accused. She called on FFI/JKPL to start a
> dialogue with GATWU and the other organisations, according to the
> CCC/INC press release.
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
As an aside to Geert's posting it might be interesting to know that two
Dutch providers, who are hosting the websites of undermentionned NGOs have
been dragged to court in Bangalore as well: XS4ALL (http://www.xs4all.nl)
and Antenna (http://www.antenna.nl). Both maintain that (i) as providers
they are merely carriers and not content providers (the 'post office
argument') and (ii) it is up to the Indian aggrieved party to prove that
the allegedly infringing sites are prosecutable under _Dutch_ law, or
under international law and/or conventions. The former is surely not the
case, and as India is not signatory of the cybercrime convention, the
latter is not even arguable.
On Sun, Jun 24, 2007 at 08:52:35AM +0200, geert lovink wrote:
> Dutch NGOs summoned by Bangalore court
>
> INDIA-SAARC
> 23 June 2007 - Issue : 735
>
> Two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) based in the Netherlands were
> asked to appear before a court in Bangalore on June 25. They are
> accused of ?cybercrime, acts of racist and xenophobic nature and
> criminal defamation,? according to the NGO?s pres release. The two
> organizations are the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and the India
> Committee of the Netherlands (ICN).
>
> The former is an international network of trade unions and NGOs, the
> latter an independent NGO, based on solidarity with deprived groups in
> Indian society. They have been raising public ?awareness of serious
> labour rights? violations? at jeans suppliers Fibres and Fabrics
> International and its wholly-owned subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt. Ltd
> (FFI/JKPL).
>
> This is the first time that a factory has filed suit against the CCC
> and ICN for publishing information on working conditions in the garment
> industry on their respective websites, their press release points out.
>
> Their information was based on interviews with workers conducted in
> 2005 and 2006, and backed up by a fact-finding mission of seven human
> rights? and women?s rights organisations.
>
> Since July 2006 the Garment and Textile Workers? Union (GATWU), the New
> Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), the Civil Initiative for Peace and
> Development (CIVIDEP), the Women Garment Workers? Front Munnade and the
> CCC Task Force Tamil Naidu have been prohibited from distributing
> information on working conditions at FFI/JKPL inside and outside India.
>
> ?Suing all human rights organizations that report about working
> conditions in the garment industry in Bangalore will not solve
> anything,? according to Esther de Haan, of the CCC International
> Secretariat and one of the accused. She called on FFI/JKPL to start a
> dialogue with GATWU and the other organisations, according to the
> CCC/INC press release.
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Migrating our server
Via: Jeebesh Bagchi
Dear List-subscriber,
We will be migrating our server to a better server and this will mean
a mild disruption on the 23rd. (for four hours between 4 pm to 8pm IST)
Sorry for the inconvenience.
warmly
list-admins
Dear List-subscriber,
We will be migrating our server to a better server and this will mean
a mild disruption on the 23rd. (for four hours between 4 pm to 8pm IST)
Sorry for the inconvenience.
warmly
list-admins
baxiupendra@aol.com has a new Yahoo! Mail address
Via: "TrueSwitch on behalf of baxiupendra@aol.com"
Re: [Commons-Law] Who Will Pay for This?
Via: Lawrence Liang
maybe you should read
http://www.amazon.com/800-Million-Pill-Truth-behind/dp/0520239458 for
an answer
Lawrence
Hasit seth wrote:
> Who will pay for this? Cost of a successful drug includes cost of many
> unsuccessful ones. Take note...
>
> NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Pfizer Inc. said on Wednesday it has
> discontinued trials of an experimental lung cancer drug licensed from
> Coley Pharmaceutical Group after an independent review committee
> deemed it ineffective, spurring a 60 percent decline in Coley shares.
>
> "The [committee] concluded that the risk-benefit profile did not
> justify continuation of the trials," Pfizer
>
> (down $0.38 to $25.83, Charts
> ,
> Fortune 500
> )
> said in a press release.
>
> The New York-based drugmaker, which is trying to become a major force
> in oncology, said the canceled trials include two late-stage and two
> mid-stage studies of the medicine, which it licensed from Coley
>
> (down $4.92 to $3.57, Charts
> )
> in 2005.
>
> The compound, called PF-3512676, was no more effective in combination
> with chemotherapy than chemotherapy alone, according to an analysis by
> the independent data safety monitoring committee.
>
> It is Coley's only drug in late-stage trials, making it the company's
> most important drug.
>
> Coley shares were down $5.06 to $3.43 in heavy afternoon trading on
> the Nasdaq. Pfizer was down 44 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $25.77 on the
> New York Stock Exchange, amid a 0.9 percent decline for the American
> Stock Exchange Pharmaceutical Index of large U.S. and European drugmakers.
>
> Cowen and Co. had predicted the medicine, if approved, would generate
> annual sales of $100 million by 2012. Top of page
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> commons-law@sarai.net
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
maybe you should read
http://www.amazon.com/800-Million-Pill-Truth-behind/dp/0520239458 for
an answer
Lawrence
Hasit seth wrote:
> Who will pay for this? Cost of a successful drug includes cost of many
> unsuccessful ones. Take note...
>
> NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Pfizer Inc. said on Wednesday it has
> discontinued trials of an experimental lung cancer drug licensed from
> Coley Pharmaceutical Group after an independent review committee
> deemed it ineffective, spurring a 60 percent decline in Coley shares.
>
> "The [committee] concluded that the risk-benefit profile did not
> justify continuation of the trials," Pfizer
>
> (down $0.38 to $25.83, Charts
> ,
> Fortune 500
> )
> said in a press release.
>
> The New York-based drugmaker, which is trying to become a major force
> in oncology, said the canceled trials include two late-stage and two
> mid-stage studies of the medicine, which it licensed from Coley
>
> (down $4.92 to $3.57, Charts
> )
> in 2005.
>
> The compound, called PF-3512676, was no more effective in combination
> with chemotherapy than chemotherapy alone, according to an analysis by
> the independent data safety monitoring committee.
>
> It is Coley's only drug in late-stage trials, making it the company's
> most important drug.
>
> Coley shares were down $5.06 to $3.43 in heavy afternoon trading on
> the Nasdaq. Pfizer was down 44 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $25.77 on the
> New York Stock Exchange, amid a 0.9 percent decline for the American
> Stock Exchange Pharmaceutical Index of large U.S. and European drugmakers.
>
> Cowen and Co. had predicted the medicine, if approved, would generate
> annual sales of $100 million by 2012. Top of page
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> commons-law@sarai.net
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
Next1-10/21