My dentist denies mistakenly cutting off the tag connecting the lip to gum while putting in an implant. What can I do? The implant was unrelated to the tag, officially called the &quot;upper labial frenulum&quot;, and the implant was for one of the two front teeth (Upper Central Incisor).
You'd have to get technical advice from Dentistry SE or something like that, but it is unlikely that this constitutes malpractice, instead was found to be necessary in the course of the implant. You could hire a lawyer to research the question to see if there is a reasonable probability that you could recover damages from a lawsuit, but the main difficulty would be establishing that you've been harmed. You would need an expert dental witness to establish that there is no reasonable connection between the implant and the frenectomy, and it might be an impossible to find a credible witness to that effect given that there is ample evidence that it can be necessary. If you are really saying that he is denying having performed the procedure, then in addition you would have to prove that he did, maybe with before and after pictures.
With the additional information in the comment, the approach most likely to give you a good outcome would be to present this as a dispute between the retailler and the manufacturer. Make a note of who said what and when, and try to obtain written confirmation from the retailler. It sounds like the retailler is currently on your side, which makes your position stronger as your legal contract is with them and they will have obligations under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (I'm assuming you bought the item as a private individual and not as a business). Note that you may not have a right to replacement. Consumer protection legislation and warranty terms include several ways the supplier can provide redress (usually repair / refund / replace). Since the preference is replacement, you will not be able to argue an inherent design fault with the product. This may give the manufacturer the opportunity to assert that the retailler, or you, specified an incorrect fitting kit - or that it was incorrectly installed. If the fittings were supplied with the foil, you could argue that it was an issue with these that led to total loss of the rest of the foil. It looks like you currently have grounds to claim this against the retailler. If there's no satisfactory resolution, consulting the Citizens Advice bureau would be a good place to start.
That is not at all what USPTO is telling you. Courts do not simply "dismiss" patents - that isn't a terminology you'd ever see used for a patent that was found to be invalid. Timeline of events: United Industries Corporation brought a suit against the owner of the patent, claiming unpatentability. That case went to trial, and the court found the claim to be invalid and that UIC failed to show unpatentability. UIC appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals dismissed the case because both parties agreed to its dismissal (it's possible they reached some external agreement we don't know about). As far as I can tell, at this moment, the patent is active.
There is, as far as I can see, no Crown exemption from the sale of goods acts (including the International Sale of Goods Conventions), but unfortunately for this patient the NHS has no liability either in logic or in law. The doctor provided a written prescription, for which there is no charge, and which allows patients to buy certain drugs. The patient took the prescription to a chemist's, which (for money) provided the drug specified in it. Even if the patient had noticed that the prescription was for the wrong form of medicine, the pharmacist has no discretion to alter it; if the prescription specifies tablets, the patient can either buy the tablets or not buy them and take the prescription back to the doctor. In neither case has either the doctor or the chemist committed any conceivable offence regarding sale of goods. (There might theoretically be a case for negligence, but it would never be worth either suing a doctor for an £8 prescription fee or reporting him to the authorities for writing a prescription for the right drug in the wrong form).
I will note from the outset that journal editors might require things from you that go beyond what is legally necessary. A typical case is that they will require one to obtain permission before reusing a figure from another article/journal/author (even though in the vast majority of cases no such permission would be needed). The legal answer might allow you to push back on the editor’s demands, but they still have the last word. There are two kinds of intellectual property to consider. Unless otherwise noted, this answer is valid for france and united-states. Trademark is almost certainly not an issue Trademark is a right to branding. A trademark holder can prevent others from using certain elements to promote their own products. The elements need not be complex, they just need to be recognizable by the public as related to the brand in question. For instance, &quot;Tesla&quot; is the name of an 19th century Serbian-American inventor known among other things for discoveries related to radio transmission. You would probably be able to market a radio transmitter under a &quot;Tesla&quot; brand (assuming there are no existing trademarks, which I have not checked). If you try the same thing with electrical vehicles, you will get sued. For a research paper, as long as you do not imply that Visa or MasterCard support your research or its results in any way, that should not be an issue. I assume, but cannot guarantee, that the above applies to most Western jurisdictions. Copyright Copyright is a protection or creative elements. Whoever authors a creative work can forbid others from distributing it under certain conditions. Are the Visa and MasterCard logos copyrighted? The first question is whether the elements at hand are protected under copyright. In the case of the Visa and MasterCard logos, this might depend on the jurisdiction. The criterion for &quot;creativity&quot; varies a lot. Some jurisdiction have adopted (some version of) the sweat of the brow doctrine, according to which work suffices to produce a &quot;creative element&quot; with copyright protection. The typical example are databases of facts where each individual entry is unoriginal but the collection might take some time to collect, curate and maintain (such as a phone book). In the united-states, the Supreme Court rejected the sweat of the brow doctrine in 1991. Accordingly, a work needs to reach the threshold of originality. Determining whether the threshold is met for a given work is done on a case-by-case basis at trial. However, it seems very likely that both logos are not protected by copyright in the United States. The Visa logo is a simple font with no significant creative elements; the MasterCard logo contains two overlapping circles. I note that Wikimedia Commons hosts both logos on their website and claims they are public-domain under that rationale (Visa, MasterCard). Wikimedia Commons usually follows copyright fairly closely, and they are a high-profile website hence a prime target for takedown requests by IP lawyers at Visa or MasterCard, so that is weak evidence that their claim is correct. But there is always the possibility that Visa / MasterCard just have not decided to sue yet. In france, the statute makes no explicit reference any threshold of originality: (article L-112-1 of the code of intellectual property) Les dispositions du présent code protègent les droits des auteurs sur toutes les oeuvres de l'esprit, quels qu'en soient le genre, la forme d'expression, le mérite ou la destination. The present code [containing all copyright statutes] protect copyrights for any works of mind, whatever their style, form of expression, artistic worth, or intended use. However, various court cases have tended to require &quot;works of mind&quot; to exhibit some amount of intellectual originality. For instance, Civ. 1ère 22 janv. 2009, n°08-11404 held that a perfume cannot be copyrighted because la fragrance d'un parfum, qui procède de la simple mise en oeuvre d'un savoir-faire, ne constitue pas la création d'une forme d'expression pouvant bénéficier de la protection des oeuvres de l'esprit par le droit d'auteur the smell of a perfume comes from the simple application of a know-how and does not constitute the creation of a form of expression subject to the protection of works of mind by copyright After a fifteen-minute look at various cases, I still do not have any strong idea of whether the Visa or MasterCard logo would be copyrighted in France. Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that they are. &quot;Fair use&quot; Even copyrighted works can be used without the copyright holder’s agreement under certain exceptions. Here again, any precise answer is jurisdiction-specific. &quot;Fair use&quot; is a US-specific doctrine, resulting from a string of court cases eventually codified into law (Wikipedia has a decent history). It is a rather general doctrine (any use case can be analyzed under the four balancing factors) and results can be hard to predict. I believe research articles usually fall on the right side, but because the logos under discussion are not under copyright in the US (see above), I will not attempt to make any in-depth analysis. Pedantic note: it is sloppy wording to use the term &quot;fair use&quot; for similar clauses in other jurisdictions. &quot;Fair use&quot; is a US doctrine. In france, the corresponding doctrine is given by a rather strict but precise statute at article L122-5 of the code of intellectual property: Lorsque l'oeuvre a été divulguée, l'auteur ne peut interdire : (...) 3° Sous réserve que soient indiqués clairement le nom de l'auteur et la source : a) Les analyses et courtes citations justifiées par le caractère critique, polémique, pédagogique, scientifique ou d'information de l'oeuvre à laquelle elles sont incorporées ; When the work has been published, the author cannot forbid: (...) 3° As long as the name of the author and the source are clearly mentioned: a) Analysis and short citations justified by the inclusion in a work with an aim of criticism, debate, pedagogy, science or information A research article is the typical case of a &quot;work of science&quot; (science means here &quot;scholarly research&quot;, not STEM). I have little doubt that it would be a covered use, especially if the paper discusses the reason behind the choice of those logos (easily recognizable by test subjects? simple shapes? etc.).
The parties can be required under oath to explain what they understand the plain meaning of the words to be. Where they disagree about the plain meaning of the words, they can use expert witnesses to give weight to their interpretation. Once the judge determines the plain meaning of the words (either by agreement between the parties or by reference to expert witnesses or other evidence), it is a matter of standard contract interpretation. Even in the case of an idioticon, where no expert witnesses are available, if the disagreement between the parties surrounds only a few words, the judge could find that there is no actual ambiguity because the context. Also, the judge could refer to parole evidence if needed. The purpose of the written contract is to provide evidence of your agreement. It is a bad idea to create evidence that you both may want to rely upon at some point if nobody else can understand it.
Breathalyzer tests are distinct from blood tests because the former does not "implicat[e] significant privacy concerns" (see Birchfeld v. ND). A cell phone is like a blood test, because it implicates significant privacy concerns, especially the level of electro-snooping that would be required to determine if someone had recently committed a phone-use offense. As the court held, Because the impact of breath tests on privacy is slight, and the need for BAC testing is great, the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless breath tests incident to arrests for drunk driving. A breath test might (but also might not) also satisfy the exigent-circumstances exception (waiting some number of hours for a warrant can easily result in the destruction of evidence), but a cell phone case could not give rise to such an exception. It should perhaps be noted that the "implied consent" laws are misnamed, because consent is not the issue. The 4th Amendment ban is on unreasonable searches, not unconsented searches. If you actually consent, it is reasonable for the police to search. I am not aware of any ruling to the effect that "because the defendant consented, the search is valid". In the context of breathalyzer law and case-law, an essential component of what makes the search reasonable is that it is incident to an arrest. With or without consent, or an implied consent law, Having assessed the effect of BAC tests on privacy interests and the need for such tests, we conclude that the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless breath tests incident to arrests for drunk driving. Extending "implied consent" to cause-unrelated searches of cars, homes, or body cavities might not pass strict scrutiny. The state has a legitimate interest in public safety which justifies some minimal intrusion, but adding a provision that "when you drive, you give implied consent to searches of everything" is not narrowly tailored. But since driving is a privilege and not a right, the state has much more leeway to give you an ultimatum: if you don't cooperate with the search, you can lose your license. On the other hand, SCOTUS has not actually approved of this slogan about driving being a privilege. Something noteworthy from Birchfield is that the court also disapproves of blood tests because a less invasive method of achieving the result is available, and they grant that "Imposition of a warrant requirement for every BAC test would likely swamp courts, given the enormous number of drunk-driving arrests, with little corresponding benefit". There being no less-invasive alternative means of realizing the legitimate state interest in stopping distracted driving, I actually expect that when this comes to pass and the matter ends up at SCOTUS, there will be another important change in search law (but "implied consent" will still be irrelevant).
It means what it literally says, that safety and effectiveness have not been established in certain contexts. The rationale behind saying this is §201.57 of 21 CFR 201, a regulation that mandates giving warnings. It is permitted to use a device or prescribe a substance where it is not yet proven that it is effective or safe for that usage, but you must not imply that it is perfectly safe and effective in all contexts. This part of the federal regulations dictates language aimed at particular scientific uncertainties. Insofar as a patient is expected to give informed consent for a treatment, informing the patient that a treatment is to some extent unproven is an essential part of the information that must be given for informed consent. So you can interpret it as a flag to the patient (or the prescribing doctor) that there is greater risk.