The classical Cantor–Bernstein theorem says that two sets X;Y which admit injective mappings X ! Y and Y ! X have the same cardinality. We obtain a di¤erent problem when the sets are equipped with an additional structure which should be preserved by the mappings (isomorphisms). It has been generalized to boolean algebras by Sikorski and Tarski: For any two -complete boolean algebras A and B and...

In a well-known result on graph property testing, [GT03] showed that every testable graph property has a “canonical” testing algorithm in which a set of vertices is selected uniformly at random and the edges queried are the complete graph over the selected vertices. In this paper we define a similar-in-spirit canonical form for Boolean function testing algorithms, and show that under some mild ...

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the relative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We focus particularly on the scale of the market, showing that as it increases, due either to growth or to the e...

This paper presents a brief overview of intellectual property rights and the various areas in proteomics to which IP rights may be applicable. Technology transfer, including licensing and business agreements, are not covered in this paper. Instead, issues and complications related to national and overseas patent prosecution in this relatively new field will be discussed.

Patent thickets are unintentionally dense webs of overlapping intellectual property rights owned by different companies that can retard progress. This article begins with a review of existing research on patent thickets, focusing in particular on the problem of patent thickets in nanotechnology, or nanothickets. After presenting visual evidence of the presence of nanothickets using a network an...