Les trolls de brevets ont connu un développement économique et médiatique très important depuis le début des années 2000. Ce modèle économique consiste à acquérir et valoriser des brevets d'invention de manière agressive en exploitant les faiblesses du système de brevets. Les revenus des trolls proviennent exclusivement des accords de licences conclus avec les entreprises fabricantes ou des dommages et intérêts obtenus à l’issu d’actions en contrefaçon. L’étude des trolls implique une analyse juridique, statistique et économique de leurs pratiques afin de pouvoir déterminer la réalité de ces modèles économiques et envisager une réponse à ces comportements. De plus, une approche de droit comparé est nécessaire car les disparités entre les règles de droit américaines et européennes permettent sont à l'origine des différences de situations observées entre les deux continents.La première partie est consacrée à la cinématique des trolls de brevets, détaillant les différentes stratégies et diversifications des pratiques au cours des quinze dernières années. On constate alors la nécessité de dépasser l’opposition manichéenne classique entre trolls des brevets et entreprises fabricantes. La réalité est plus complexe, les entreprises fabricantes et certaines entités publiques étant désormais fortement impliquées dans des stratégies similaires.La seconde partie est consacrée à la dynamique des trolls avec l'étude des conditions de développement, qui permettent de comprendre pourquoi cette pratique n’est pas présente sur le territoire européen dans les mêmes proportions. L’analyse de ces comportements face aux fonctions du droit de brevet est ensuite nécessaire pour caractériser l’abus constitué par ces stratégies. Enfin, l’encadrement de ces pratiques est étudié à travers les défenses disponibles pour les entreprises victimes de ces stratégies, tant en droit positif qu’en droit prospectif. Ces défenses sont appelées à traiter les conséquences et non les causes des trolls de brevets, il est donc nécessaire d’envisager le développement du marché secondaire des brevets, car ses faiblesses sont en partie responsables de l’avènement des trolls. Ainsi, un meilleur encadrement de ce marché pourrait permettre de développer les échanges de brevets et réduire les possibilités d’abus autorisées par le système des brevets aujourd’hui. / The economic development and media coverage of patent trolls has tremendously increased since 2000. This business model consists in acquiring and aggressively monetizing patents through the exploitation of the patent system failures. Patent trolls generate revenues from licensing agreements with manufacturing entities and damages obtained by court decision. The conduct of a legal, economic and statistical study is necessary in order to determine the reality of these business models and to suggest a response to these behaviors. A comparative law approach is necessary as the differences between the american and european law is the source of factual disparities observed between these two continents.The first part is dedicated to the patent trolls kinematics through the study of the various business models and their diversification over the past 15 years. It reveals the need to overcome the classical opposition between trolls and manufacturing companies as these companies and even some public funded structures are now developing similar strategies.The second part study the mechanic of patent trolls through their conditions of development, which helps to understand why trolls are not operating in Europe through the same proportions. The assessment of an abuse of the patent system is then conducted with the study of these behaviors through the lens of the patent function. Furthermore, the actual and future legal responses offered to companies facing abusive infringement claims are studied. However these defenses are meant to treat the consequences of abusive behavior and not their causes, it is therefore necessary to study the development of the secondary patent market, since some of its weakness are partially responsible for the development of patent trolls. We suggest that the enhancement of some elements of the secondary patent market could help foster patent exchange and reduce the possibility of abusing the patent system.

Prägnanz is a single movement composition for orchestra. This composition reflects the influence of minimalist composers such as Phillip Glass and Steve Reich. The structure of the piece is generated by a rhythmic motive that is transformed through a large-scale additive process. This overarching process is periodically interrupted by contrasting episodes, creating a form similar to a rondo. Several themes and gestures are explored, including a phasing rhythmic motive. The harmonic language is static, almost monolithic, in order to accentuate the gradual motion of the piece towards its goal. The title comes from Gestalt psychology; the Law of Prägnanz describes how the mind perceives simplicity within the complexity of reality. This tendency is mirrored in the piece through the focus on the central motivic transformation in spite of the complexity of contrasting themes, orchestrations, and gestures.

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Information contained in the free text of health records is useful for the immediate care of patients as well as for medical knowledge creation. Advances in clinical language processing have made it possible to automatically extract this information, but most research has, until recently, been conducted on clinical text written in English. In this thesis, however, information extraction from Swedish clinical corpora is explored, particularly focusing on the extraction of clinical findings. Unlike most previous studies, Clinical Finding was divided into the two more granular sub-categories Finding (symptom/result of a medical examination) and Disorder (condition with an underlying pathological process). For detecting clinical findings mentioned in Swedish health record text, a machine learning model, trained on a corpus of manually annotated text, achieved results in line with the obtained inter-annotator agreement figures. The machine learning approach clearly outperformed an approach based on vocabulary mapping, showing that Swedish medical vocabularies are not extensive enough for the purpose of high-quality information extraction from clinical text. A rule and cue vocabulary-based approach was, however, successful for negation and uncertainty classification of detected clinical findings. Methods for facilitating expansion of medical vocabulary resources are particularly important for Swedish and other languages with less extensive vocabulary resources. The possibility of using distributional semantics, in the form of Random indexing, for semi-automatic vocabulary expansion of medical vocabularies was, therefore, evaluated. Distributional semantics does not require that terms or abbreviations are explicitly defined in the text, and it is, thereby, a method suitable for clinical corpora. Random indexing was shown useful for extending vocabularies with medical terms, as well as for extracting medical synonyms and abbreviation dictionaries.

A valid arbitration agreement constitutes a bar to court proceedings as well as a prerequisite for arbitral proceedings. In NJA 2008 p. 406 and NJA 2012 p. 183, the Swedish Supreme Court applied the so-called doctrine of assertion with respect to the issue of whether a dispute should be settled by arbitration or litigation. Prior to these judgments, it was uncertain if the doctrine of assertion was applicable regarding this issue. The purpose of the essay is to examine the meaning of the doctrine and how it should be applied based on NJA 2008 p. 406 and NJA 2012 p. 183. In essence, the following conclusions are drawn from the judgments. As a starting point, it is essential to distinguish between the question of whether there is a valid arbitration agreement between the parties, the question of which legal relationships the arbitration agreement covers and the question of which circumstances the assessment of the issue of jurisdiction should be based on. The questions are all significant to the issue of whether a dispute should be settled by arbitration or litigation, but according to the Supreme Court, the doctrine of assertion should only be applied with respect to the last question. Thus, when an arbitral tribunal tries its own jurisdiction, it should base its assessment on the circumstances referred to by the party which requested the arbitration. This is also the case when a claimant brings an action before a court and the respondent objects to the jurisdiction of the court by invoking an arbitration agreement. In accordance with the doctrine of assertion, the court should base its assessment of the issue of jurisdiction on the circumstances which the claimant has referred to.

In this dissertation, I deal with the problem of presupposition projection. I mostly focus on compound sentences composed of two clauses and conditional sentences in which the second clause carries a presupposition. The central claim is that the presupposition carried by the second clause projects by default, with the exception of cases in which the presupposition entails the first clause (or, in disjunctive sentences, the negation of the first clause). In the latter cases, the presupposition should not project, since it is logically stronger than the first clause (or its negation). Thus, in conjunctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker’s assertion of the first clause would be uninformative. As for conditionals and disjunctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker would show inconsistency in his/her beliefs by showing uncertainty about the truth value of the first clause (or its negation). I argue that, in conditionals, this uncertainty is conversationally implicated whereas, in disjunctions, it results from the context’s compatibility with the first disjunct. I maintain that, in cases where projection is blocked, the presupposition is conditionalized to the first clause (or its negation). I demonstrate that the conditionalization is motivated in a straightforward way by the pragmatic constraints on projection just described and that, contrary to what is defended by the so-called ‘satisfaction theory’, presupposition conditionalization is a phenomenon independent from local satisfaction. / En esta tesis, trato el problema de la proyección de presuposiciones. Me centro mayoritariamente en oraciones compuestas de dos cláusulas y en oraciones condicionales cuya segunda cláusula contiene una presuposición. El argumento central es que la presuposición contenida en la segunda cláusula proyecta por defecto, con la excepción de casos en los que la presuposición entraña la primera cláusula (o, en las oraciones disyuntivas, la negación de la primera cláusula). En estos últimos casos, la presuposición no debería proyectar, puesto que es lógicamente más fuerte que la primera cláusula (o su negación). Por tanto, en las oraciones conjuntivas, si la presuposición proyectase, la aseveración de la primera cláusula por parte del hablante no sería informativa. En cuanto a las oraciones condicionales y disyuntivas, si la presuposición projectase, el hablante mostraría inconsistencia en sus creencias al mostrar incertidumbre acerca del valor de verdad de la primera cláusula (o su negación). Sostengo que, en oraciones condicionales, esta incertidumbre es implicada conversacionalmente mientras que, en las oraciones disyuntivas, resulta de la compatibilidad contextual de la primera cláusula. Mantengo que, en casos en los que la proyección es bloqueada, la presuposición es condicionalizada a la primera cláusula (o su negación). Demuestro que la condicionalización es motivada de manera directa por las restricciones de tipo pragmático descritas arriba y que, contrariamente a la idea defendida por la así llamada ‘teoría de la satisfacción’, la condicionalización de la presuposición es un fenómeno independiente de la satisfacción local de la misma.

On-line experiments by physics education at basic school The aim of this diploma thesis is to prove the usefulness of on-line experiments during physics teaching. The work is divided into two parts: theoretical one and practical one. The theoretical part deals with the teaching in primary schools, the possibility of the usage of informational and communication technologies, the increase of student´s motivation through new teaching methods and the student´s life in a school surrounding. The practical part consists of the experiment complex created by the set PASCO. The working sheets, which are given to some of the experiments, enable to attest the effectiveness of the chosen experiments in practice. The results of the didactic samplers to the particular classes are enclosed and described.

Summaries in English and Afrikaans / Text in Afrikaans / Until 1988, hearsay-evidence in our legal system was governed by common law. During this period resistance developed regarding the practice that hearsay which complied with certain exceptions could indeed be allowed. Case law excluded further exceptions being added. Legislation was enacted in 1988 in which hearsay was defined, a total exclusionary rule retained, but the Courts given a wide discretion to allow hearsay. Via this legislation a more accommodating stance towards hearsay was introduced. This dissertation aimed at measuring whether the legislation achieved its objectives and consisted of analysing case law and interviewing Judges and Advocates. The conclusion arrived at is that the legislation has only marginally changed the usage of hearsay in our legal system. The major obstacle lies in the attitude of practitioners who continue to distrust hearsay and do not utilize the mechanism provided by statute. / Tot en met 1988, is hoorse-getuienis in ons regstelsel gemeenregtelik beheer. In die tydperk bet besware egter geleidelik ontwikkel veral oor die gekunstelde wyse waarop hoorsê as aan bepaalde uitsonderings voldoen is wel toegelaat is. Regspraak het voorts ook bepaal dat geen verdere uitsonderings toegevoeg kon word nie. In 1988 is wetgewing uitgevaardig waarin hoorsê-getuienis omskryf word, 'n algehele uitsluitingsreel behou word maar aan die howe 'n wye diskresie verleen word om na oorweging van voorgeskrewe faktore, hoorsê wei toe te laat. Die oogmerk van hierdie wetgewing was om 'n meganisme daar te stel om soos by die civil regstelsels en sekere ander Iande, 'n meer toeskietlike houding jeens hoorsê te bewerkstellig. Hierdie verhandeling se hoofdoel was om te bepaal of die wetgewing in die doel geslaag bet. Om tot 'n bevinding te kom is regspraak ontleed, en is onderhoude gevoer beide met Regters en die Advokatuur. Die slotsom bereik dui daarop dat die wetgewing maar weinig verander bet in die gebruikmaking van hoorse-getuienis in ons regstelsel. Wat die wetgewing self betref, hoewel daar sekere besware te make is oor sekere bepalings, verskaf dit tog 'n bruikbare instrument. Die grootste struikelblok is gelee in die instelling van die praktisyns wat bly vasklou aan 'n gevestigde vrees vir hoarse en nie gebruikmaak van die nuwe geleentheid nou deur die wetgewing daargestel nie. / Law / LL.M.

O objetivo desta tese é analisar, em uma perspectiva comparada, como nascem, evoluem e são frustrados três projetos de democratização radical na América Latina nos primórdios do imperialismo. José Martí (1853-1895) em Cuba, Juan B. Justo (1865- 1928) na Argentina e Ricardo Flores Magón (1874-1922) no México, lideram esforços intelectuais e políticos orientados a superar os constrangimentos à integração nacional legados pela origem colonial, que se expressam em um pensamento que fundamenta a atuação dos partidos que dirigiram. Vivendo no contexto de difusão das relações de produção capitalistas no continente, estes projetos constituem esforços pioneiros de subordinar o desenvolvimento capitalista aos desígnios da sociedade nacional. A incidência que tiveram para o desencadeamento dos processos que objetivaram a guerra da independência em Cuba, a reforma política na Argentina e a Revolução Mexicana - atesta a sintonia de suas propostas em relação aos dilemas que enfrentaram. O malogro do ideário democrático que representavam indica a prevalência de constrangimentos estruturais que obstam a consumação da nação na América Latina naquela circunstância. Partindo da premissa de que os autores analisados constituem expoentes do pensamento e da política radical em suas conjunturas, nossa hipótese é que a aproximação entre os três casos sugere as balizas que referenciavam a máxima consciência possível no campo da militância democrática no continente naquele contexto histórico. / This research aims to analyse, on a comparative perspective, the rising, evolution and eventual frustration of three projects of radical democratization in Latin America in the beginnings of imperialism. José Martí (1853-1895) in Cuba, Juan B. Justo (1865-1928) in Argentina and Ricardo Flores Magón (1874-1922) in México, led intelectual and political efforts aiming to ovecome the constraints inherited from the colonial past as a premise to assert national integration. an effort that was expressed in their thoughts, which in turn have shaped the political parties which they led. This purpose has been expressed on their thought, which in turn has shaped the political parties they conducted. Living in the context of difusion of capitalist production relations in the continent, these projects constitute pioneer attempts to subordinate the capitalist development to the design of national society. The fact that their political activity contributed to unleash the processes which they aimed to the War of Independence in Cuba, political reform in Argentina and the Mexican Revolution attests that their proposals were well tuned to the dilemmas they faced. The failure to impose the democratic ideals which they represented points to the prevalence of structural constrains that hinder the consumation of the nation in Latin America on that circumstance. Assuming as a premise that the authors analysed in this work are exponents of radical thought and politics in their conjunctures, our hypothesis is that the approach of the three cases suggest the boundaries that referred the maximum posible consciousness of democratic militancy in the continent in that historical context.

In recent years, patent aggregation and patent trolling activities have received growing attention from all over the world because of the controversial nature of such activities. Somehow it becomes a global obsession to presume that such activities or even the existence of PAEs are problematic by nature and need to be redressed via government intervention, partly due to the unpromising situation in the US. This article seeks to explore the nature of such issue and find out the most appropriate way for China to deal with such issue. The author believes that while such activities might at first sight seem problematic, in fact they are legal commercial practice in general, or more specifically, they are merely strategic uses of patents. This article also argues that there are available remedies under both EU and Chinese legal framework to catch the real problematic conducts derived from such activities. Hence it would seem to the author that even though the quantity of such activities is meant to increase in China, there is neither justification nor need to intervene such activities: the existing legal framework is enough to address certain misconducts; and the market is capable of ensuring its own equilibrium.