Originality is the most basic requirement for the copyrighting of a work and may be viewed as the mirror image of copyright infringement. In terms of section 2(3) of the Copyright Act, a work remains eligible for copyright even if the making thereof involved an infringement of copyright in some other work. However, a certain aspect or a feature of a work (relating to the “substantial part” requirement for copyright infringement; “substantial part” being understood from a hypertext rather than a linear point of view) cannot be infringing and original. In this thesis, the South African legal understanding of the originality concept is determined from case law. Specific attention is given to the meaning of “skill” and “labour”; the protection afforded to mere labour in South Africa and certain selected other jurisdictions; how the subjective nature of the originality test is affected by the “meritorious distinctiveness” requirement; and the degree of own skill and/or labour required for a work to be original and consequently protected. The present literary concept of originality is derived from literary discussions that appeared in newspapers and other publications in the wake of six “plagiarism scandals” which each caused a furore in Afrikaans literary circles. Even though the terminology used by littérateurs differs from that used in legal circles, originality essentially means the same for littérateurs and lawyers. Skill and/or labour as required by law is reflected in the literary “crucial distance” concept. The fact that a sufficient degree of skill and/or labour is required is reflected in the fact that the literary standard of a work is determined on the basis of how “tightly woven” a work is. Although a general protection of original ideas would negatively influence the free flow of information, measures for the protection of ideas are developing, particularly in the United States of America, where ideas (especially in the film industry) are a very valuable commodity. As Swarth proposes, applying the “novelty” and “concreteness” criteria in inverse ratio to each other could help to create an environment where idea purveyors and prospective buyers felt more free to negotiate and enter into agreements over original ideas. Postmodernism, a contemporary interpretative strategy that reaches into nearly every aspect of modern society, is discussed with specific reference to its interaction with originality. The influences of two phenomena of postmodernism on the originality concept, namely hypertext and Chaos theory, are investigated. Recommendations are made regarding measures aimed at the retention of talented authors and the original content of works in the wake of plagiarism scandals, while still holding the wrongdoer responsible for his actions. Certain suggestions are also made regarding the accessibility of courts and the supplementation of the few available precedents regarding originality in creative literary works. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Private Law / unrestricted

Clearly established conservation priorities are urgently required for taxa and ecosystems in critical need of conservation. This helps to identify and document taxa most in need of conservation attention, and provides an index of the state of degeneration of biodiversity. Including as much relevant information as possible in a prioritisation assessment will deliver the most accurate classification, yet these variables should not overly complicate the prioritisation process. Conservation assessments depend not just on the taxon’s susceptibility to threat (i.e. risk of extinction, or Red List assessments), but also the conservation value, irreplaceability and nature and intensity of the threats. Research into the value and applicability of conservation prioritisation tools at a regional scale, allowed for the assessment of the extinction risk as well as subsequent priority ranking of South African mammals. At the outset research was directed towards investigating South African mammals in accordance with their respective regional and global World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List and Red Data Book assessments. The regional Red List assessment drastically improved local knowledge of the current extinction risk of various mammals, and identified 57 marine and terrestrial mammals to be highly threatened. Up to date regional extinction risk assessments, allowed for the investigation of whether a human activity threat index derived from six human activity variables across South Africa could be used to highlight mammals threatened with extinction while also being exposed to high human activity. Evidence indicated various threatened and lower risk mammals were exposed to high human activity throughout their range, pointing to high potential threat and future increase in extinction risk. For relevant prioritisation to take place, components of vulnerability (IUCN Red List assessments, and occupancy data), irreplaceability (endemism and taxonomic distinctiveness), and threat measures (body mass and human density in a taxa distributional range) was introduced into relational priority assessment which allowed for a simplified approach in determining conservation priorities for taxa under various region-specific conditions. The use of different sets of information clearly affected the priority rankings. South African Chiroptera and Carnivora was used as a case study to addresses whether a simple measure of taxonomic diversity can be used as a proxy for different measures of phylogenetic diversity in determining regional conservation priority of taxa, when such information is limited. Evidence does suggest that the utilisation of the simple taxonomic diversity measure may provide the appropriate information on evolutionary diversity. Two theoretical concepts were proposed to address some potential shortcomings in the conservation prioritisation arena. The Orange List method offers a system to identify “species [or taxa] of high national importance or of high conservation value” (South African National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act 2004). In turn the Green Data List essentially represents a radical shift in the traditional approach to the management of both threatened and invasive taxa. Throughout this thesis, evidence do point to smaller mammals being of high conservation concern in South Africa, with the members from the Orders Rodentia, Chiroptera and Insectivora being constantly identified as high conservation priority. Apart from contributing to our current understanding of the conservation importance/priority of South Africa mammals, this current thesis has resulted in a robust understanding of various assessment techniques. / Thesis (DPhil (Zoology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Zoology and Entomology / unrestricted

Few issues in the contemporary American political and social environments are as salient and emotionally charged as the debate over immigration. The thesis tests several competing hypotheses concerning the determinants of public opinion – among white respondents – on immigration issues. These include: the contextual considerations of southern residence and proximity to large numbers of Hispanic immigrants, as well as the individual-level factors of economic insecurity, political knowledge, national identity, group pride, and racism. Using data from the 2004 American National Election Study, the thesis provides a critical test of the competing hypotheses using multivariate analysis. Furthermore, conditional relationships are posited, facilitating a more refined analysis of the structure of attitudes on immigration issues. The results indicate that racism, group pride, symbolic patriotism, ideology, and isolationism are the most consistent and significant predictors of immigration policy preferences. The use of four distinct dependent variable questions also highlights the inconsistency in public opinion regarding immigration and the division between public perception of documented and undocumented entries. Future research should focus on the interrelationship between variables that are used by the individual to define group associations, as well as the change in national and personal identity brought about by the events of September 11th, 2001.

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Thesis deals with product placement in Czech marketing practice in the light of existence of regulations given by EC directive 2007/65/EC. It arbitrates alternatives of product placement regulation ban as it works now or liberalization under restrictive conditions.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:19:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernanda Fujita De Castro Mello.pdf: 1146002 bytes, checksum: 88fa883d776dafab92d2667add2dc245 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-11-08 / The present study aims at analyzing two empiric phenomena resulting from the notoriety of a mark: the attainment and the loss of trademark distinctiveness. Firstly, it aims to introduce the institute of the mark as a distinctive sign, demonstrating that the distinctiveness is a condition of validity for the grant thereof. After defining the institute, the attainment of notoriety by the mark is analyzed, being the object of the present study the notorious mark as the category, and the well-known mark and high-reputation mark as the types. The legal provision and the scope of protection of notorious marks are broached, as well as the main consequences of trademark notoriety. Having made this introduction, the present study discusses the phenomena of attainment and loss of trademark distinctiveness resulting from the notoriety thereof. The first of them is studied by the theory of secondary meaning, and its occurrence is analyzed in all systems of trademark attainment. Emphasis is given to the expressions originally non distinctive and which are susceptible of attainment of secondary meaning, being therefore susceptible to registration as a mark. Next, the phenomenon of loss of trademark distinctiveness resulting from its distinguishability is analyzed, the phenomenon known as trademark degeneration or trademark degeneracy. Since it deals with a slow process, and almost always irreversible, some indicator signs of trademark degeneration are studied, as well as customary forms used to avoid it. Finally, a few judicial and administrative decisions involving the referred to phenomena are analyzed, seeking to exemplify some forms found for proving and identifying the attainment of secondary meaning and trademark degeneration empirically, emphasizing the position of the Courts and the INPI (the Brazilian Patents and Trademarks Office) in relation to the matter / O presente trabalho visa analisar dois fenômenos empíricos decorrentes da notoriedade de marca: a aquisição e a perda de distintividade marcária. Primeiramente, busca-se introduzir o instituto da marca como signo distintivo, demonstrando ser a distintividade condição de validade para sua concessão. Após definir o instituto, a aquisição de notoriedade pela marca é analisada, sendo objeto do presente estudo a marca notória como gênero, e suas espécies marca notoriamente conhecida e marca de alto renome. A previsão legal e o âmbito de proteção das marcas notórias são abordados, assim como as principais conseqüências da notoriedade marcária. Feita esta introdução, o presente trabalho aborda os fenômenos de aquisição e perda de distintividade marcária decorrentes de sua notoriedade. O primeiro deles é estudado pela teoria do secondary meaning, ou teoria do significado secundário, e sua ocorrência é analisada em todos os sistemas de aquisição de marca. É dado destaque às expressões originalmente não distintivas e que são passíveis de aquisição de significado secundário, sendo, portanto, passíveis de registro como marca. A seguir, é analisado o fenômeno da perda de distintividade marcária decorrente de sua distintividade, fenômeno conhecido como degeneração ou degenerescência marcária. Por se tratar de processo lento, e quase sempre irreversível, são estudados alguns sinais indicadores da degeneração marcária, e formas costumeiramente utilizadas para evitá-la. Por fim, algumas decisões judiciais e administrativas envolvendo referidos fenômenos são analisadas, buscando-se exemplificar algumas das formas encontradas para se provar e identificar a aquisição de secondary meaning e a degeneração marcária empiricamente, destacando-se a posição dos Tribunais e do INPI quanto ao tema

The simplicity principle posits that we interpret sense data as the simplest consistent distal cause, or that our high level perceptual representations of stimuli are optimized for simplicity. The traditional paradigm used to test this principle is coding theory, where alternate representations of stimuli are constructed, simplicity is measured as shortness of representation length, and behavioural experiments attempt to show that the shortest representations correspond best to perception. In this study we apply coding theory to marker-based human walking motion. We compare two representation schemes. The first is based on marker coordinates in a body-centred Cartesian coordinate system. The second is based on a model of 15 rigid body segments with Euler angles and a Cartesian translation for each. Both of our schemes are principal component (PC)-based implementations of a norm-based multidimensional object space – a type of model for high level perceptual schemes that has received attention in the literature over the past two decades. Representation length is quantified as number of retained PC’s, with error increasing with discarded PC’s. We generalize simplicity to efficiency measured as error across all possible lengths, where more efficient schemes admit less error across lengths. We find that the Cartesian coordinates-based scheme is more efficient than the Euler angles and translations-based scheme across a database of 100 walkers. In order to link this finding to perception we turn to the caricature effect that subjects can identify caricatures of familiar stimuli more accurately than veridicals. Our design was to compare walker caricatures generated in our two schemes in the hope of finding that one gives caricatures that benefit identification more than the other, from which we would conclude the former to be a better model of the true perceptual scheme. However, we find that analogous caricatures between the two schemes are only distinguishable at caricature levels so extreme that identification performance breaks down, so our design became infeasible and no conclusion for a simplicity principle in walker perception is reached. We also measure a curve of increasing then decreasing identification performance with caricature level and an optimal level at approximately double the distinctiveness of a typical walker. / Thesis (Master, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2010-10-29 19:16:39.943

Studien undersöker samt diskuterar vilka kommunikationsstrategier ideella organisationer använder för att nå externa intressenter och svarar på följande frågor: Vilka kommunikationsstrategier använder ideella organisationer för att nå externa intressenter? Finns likheter respektive skillnader i hur ideella organisationer kommunicerar, vilka? Studiens teoretiska ramverk bygger på ideella organisationers möjligheter samt utmaningar med perspektiv på strategisk kommunikation. Den primära metod som används är en kvalitativ textanalys av Cancerfondens samt Ung Cancers hemsida då vi granskar hur organisationerna strategiskt arbetar i sin kommunikation. Textanalysen kombineras med kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer och används som komplement för att lyfta samt stödja resonemang. Resultatet visar att Cancerfonden och Ung Cancer på olika vis är duktiga kommunikatörer inom ramen för ett gott anseende. Cancerfonden med fokus på forskningsfinansiering och kunskapsspridning är transparenta och konsistenta i sin kommunikation då statistiska redogörelser och resultat genomsyrar hemsidan. Ung Cancer låter på ett systematiskt sätt integrera frivilliga i kommunikationsprocessen och gör sig mer mottaglig samt öppen för dialog med externa intressenter, vilket resulterar i mer intima relationer med medlemmar. Vad som förenar organisationerna är deras initiativ att göra skillnad. Trots lika engagemang mynnar deras visioner ut i olika spår därmed krävs olika kommunikationsstrategier i den externa kommunikationen.

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No description available.