James Boyle

Synthetic Biology: Caught between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons

Synthetic biology presents a particularly revealing example of the difficulty of assimilating a new technology into the conceptual limits around existing intellectual property rights.

A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?

This Essay argues that we need a politics, or perhaps a political economy, of intellectual property. Using the controversy over copyright on the Internet as a case study and the history of the environmental movement as a comparison, it offers a couple of modest proposals about what such a politics might look like— what theoretical ideas it might draw upon, and what constituencies it might unite.

Microreactor Coupled with Laser-Generated VUV Photoionization for Pyrolysis and Combustion Studies: Pyrolysis of Ethyl Acetylene

Abstract By coupling a well-stirred microjet reactor with Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization and a time of flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS), we have developed a useful technique for studying hydrocarbon combustion and pyrolysis kinetics. The reaction occurs in a microjet reactor which allows immediate free jet expansion into vacuum, preserving trace non-equilibrium reaction intermediate species. The detection of these products with minimal fragmentation using single photon VUV ionization allows the direct determination of reaction intermediate parent species, simplifying the identification of probable reaction pathways. Preliminary results show products from the pyrolysis of ethyl acetylene at tempera lures from 300-1600 K. for ms reaction times. These results illustrate the advantages of using VUV-ionization mass spectrometry for the simultaneous detection of a wide-spectrum of pyrolysis and combustion products, especially where complex mixtures of hydrocarbons at ppm levels are present

What intellectual property law should learn from software

Softwares close encounters with the law provide some lessons for our future.

Benzene and Higher Hydrocarbon Formation During Allene Pyrolysis

Pyrolysis of allene in a microjet reactor at millisecond to second reaction times over a temperature range from 500 to 1700 K was used to study higher hydrocarbon growth processes from C3 hydrocarbon species. Species detection of both stable and labile product masses was carried out using vacuum ultra violet (VUV) photoionization mass spectrometry. The first product observed with increasing temperature at ms time scales was mass 80 u followed at somewhat higher temperatures by smaller than parent-mass pyrolysis products. Low temperature benzene formation likely occurs through the molecular channel consisting of allene dimerization to a mixture of dimethylenecyclobutane isomers (DMCB) and subsequent isomerization and hydrogen loss to form benzene. Mass 79 u is observed at concentrations up to half the mass 80 u concentration prior to mass 78 u detection. The allene dimerization step is fast enough to account for the initial rate of mass 78 u production observed prior to significant allene decomposition. The 1,2-DMCB also reacts with allene to form a trimer at mass 120 u. The appearance of other high molecular weight products at masses 92 u, 116 u, 114 u and 158 u is also observed before allene decomposition occurs at greater than several percent levels. At higher temperatures and longer residence times (ms range), however, the benzene production rate shows a change in formation mechanism through a change in the apparent activation energy observed. At temperatures above 1580 K and ms time scales, mass 78 u production was consistent with formation through propargyl radical recombination. Higher hydrocarbon growth to multiple ring compounds was also observed at even longer residence times (ms range) with growth initially consistent with acetylene and possibly other small hydrocarbon addition to PAH radicals followed by reactive dimerization of small PAH compounds with the first dimers observed in the 400–600 u range.