Bites Bites of mosquitoes belonging to the genera Anopheles Meigen, Aedes Meigen, Culex L. and Haemagogus L. are a general nuisance and are responsible for the transmission of important tropical diseases such as malaria, hemorrhagic dengue and yellow fevers and filariasis (elephantiasis). Plants are traditional sources of mosquito repelling essential oils (EOs), glyceridic oils and repellent an...

We build on recent research on the effects of category contrast to gain new insights on why some patents have more impact than others. Analyzing forward citation patterns of almost three millions patents of USPTO, we show that the distinctiveness of the class to which a patent belongs affects the number of citations received in two ways: first, patents classified in high-contrast classes, on av...

Why should patents be granted on genes? This question is a provocative and troubling issue currently facing society. Looking at the commercial realities of gene patents, I conclude that on balance their effect is to retard, rather than to stimulate, both scientific and economic progress. The monopolies awarded by patents on genes as novel chemicals are not therefore in the public interest. Soci...

Concerns about the alleged harmful effects of gene patents--including hindered research and innovation and impeded patient access to high-quality genetic diagnostic tests--have resulted in overreactions from the public and throughout the legal profession. These overreactions are exemplified by Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a 2010 case in the Southern D...

One means to support for design-by-analogy (DbA) in practice involves giving designers efficient access to source analogies as inspiration to solve problems. The patent database has been used for many DbA support efforts, as it is a preexisting repository of catalogued technology. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) has been shown to be an effective computational text processing method for extractin...

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies strive to maximize patent term as lengthy development and regulatory review processes precede commercial sales. Most patents internationally receive a standard term of 20 years from the initial application filing date. But US patents frequently receive a longer term, mainly due to patent term adjustment (PTA). PTA offers extra patent term to compensat...

F or many years, economists typically conceptualized patents as well-defined property rights giving their owners either a monopoly over some market or at least a significant competitive advantage in that market due to control over a product improvement or a low-cost method of production (Nordhaus, 1969; Reinganum, 1989). Once a patent was issued, this approach tended to assume that the patent w...

The 1883 Patents Act in Britain provides perspective formodern patent policy reforms because it radically changed incentives for inventors by reducing filing fees by 84 percent. Patents increased 2.5-fold after the reform, which was evenly distributed across the geography of inventors, the organization of invention 0 September 2010 ccepted 15 October 2010 vailable online 30 November 2010