the effect of the court taking judicial notice is different in civil and criminal trials. In a civil trial, the fact taken notice of is thereby conclusively proved. In a criminal case, the defendant has the right to contest every fact that might tend to incriminate him. Therefore, the court taking judicial notice would simply allow the jury to make the finding that the court took notice of, but would not require this outcome, and would not prevent the defense from presenting evidence to rebut the noticed fact. Judicial notice in foreign affairs Legal disputes about foreign affairs are generally settled by judicial notice by obtaining the information directly from the office of the Secretary of State (in the United States). For example, if a litigant in an extradition hearing attempted to argue that Israel was not a sovereign state, a statement from the Secretary of State that the U.S. recognized Israel as a sovereign state would settle the issue and no evidence could be led to the contrary. (In the United Kingdom, similar result could be had to information from the Foreign Secretary.) Recently, Court of Appeals decisions regarding the legal rights of detainees of Guantanamo Bay took judicial notice of Cuba having no sovereignty over the U.S. naval base in that location despite claims by the United States government that it was Cuban territory and not subject to the application of United States law. Federal courts and the courts of most jurisdictions have determined that matters of foreign law are subject to permissive judicial notice. Official notice During the prosecution phase of U.S. patent applications, a similar concept to judicial notice is applied by patent examiners, but the process is referred to as taking "official notice". In a typical patent claim rejection, the examiner has to present prima facie evidence from the prior art, usually patent documents or other printed publications, that the subject matter of a rejected claim was known or would have been obvious prior to the application for patent by the inventor. However, examiners may officially notice facts that "are capable of instant and unquestionable demonstration as being well-known". Patent applicants are then allowed to traverse the official notice given by an examiner, in which case the examiner must present an evidentiary document to prove the fact or limitation is well known. Historical examples In the 1858 murder trial of William Armstrong, his attorney, then-former