Legal regulation of franchising with respect to intellectual property protection aspects The aim of the submitted thesis is to analyse the phenomenon of franchising as an instrument of commercialisation of intellectual property rights, assessment of the importance of these rights to existence and functioning of the system, instruments of its protection as well as the dynamics of the relationship between the franchisor and the franchisees in relation to these rights. The work consists of four topical sections. The first one is focused on franchising in general terms. It emphasises the internal differentiation of the phenomenon and presents the basic types of franchise systems, we might come across. Subsequently it strives for theoretical definition of the term by means of comparison. The second section of the work is devoted to the term of intellectual property. This chapter is introduced by a brief classification of the rights subordinated to the term which is followed by a discussion on significance of these rights to franchise systems. Subsequently is the focal point moved to the issues of trademark law and know-how protection, which are, in my opinion, from the franchising standpoint crucial. The third section of the work deals with trademarks, without aspiring on comprehensiveness of the...

St. Gallen, Univ., Diss., 2005.

Världen har genom historien formats och stöpts om av krig och konflikter. Dagens globala värld är inget undantag med inbördeskrig som ett ständigt återkommande fenomen. Våldsyttringar inom stater har sedan andra världskriget varit den största källan till konflikter och bidrar med flest antal offer. Inbördeskrig har drabbat en tredjedel av världens länder under 1900- talet och en femtedel har upplevt minst 10 år av inbördeskrig från 1960. Konflikter runt om i världen påverkar den internationella politiken och hur alla människor lever, och god kunskap om konflikters struktur är därmed ytterst viktig.  De flesta studier på området har behandlat s.k. inter-state wars, d.v.s. krig mellan stater. Studier rörande s.k. intra-state wars, konflikter mellan regeringsmakten i en stat och icke-statliga grupperingar, är dock inte lika vanliga. Under den senare delen av 1900-talet har inbördeskrig varit den form av konflikt som orsakat störst skada och lidande. 1996 publicerade David T. Mason och Patrick J. Fett artikeln ”How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach”. I artikeln undersöker författarna uppfattningen att det är svårare att fredsförhandla i inbördeskrig än i mellanstatliga krig. Detta då offer och förövare efter krigets slut fortsatt måste leva sida vid sida. I krig mellan stater drar parterna sig tillbaka till respektive territorier vilket gör att en eventuell fredsprocess anses relativt enklare att uppnå. Frågan är vilka faktorer som leder till fredssamtal alternativt till en seger för en av parterna?

De par le monde, même dans ses territoires les plus reculés, et depuis des siècles parfois, des hommes et des femmes partagent et cultivent des ressources biologiques et des savoirs qu’ils utilisent pour pratiquer la médecine. Afin de pouvoir se développer, être valorisés ou simplement subsister, ces savoir-faire traditionnels en médecine ont besoin d’être protégés, notamment contre la biopiraterie et les brevets prédateurs. Dans cet objectif, afin de comprendre et d’expliciter le champ des possibilités, la présente étude envisage la protection de ces savoirs traditionnels sous divers angles juridiques qui dépassent généreusement les frontières nationales. À cette fin, elle entreprend de caractériser ce qu’est un savoir-faire traditionnel en médecine et d’en établir un portrait historique et législatif. Elle explore ensuite les possibilités protectrices et les écueils du droit de la propriété intellectuelle, mais aussi de nombreuses ouvertures juridiques existantes. Parmi celles-ci sont présentés des législations sui generis et les principaux accords internationaux, au rang desquels émergent la Convention sur la diversité biologique (CDB) et le Protocole de Nagoya, déclinés par quelques nations dans leur législation, de façon hétérogène. Pour parvenir à ses conclusions, cette recherche s’est appuyée sur un fil conducteur tendu entre deux pays emblématiques, la France et la Chine. / Throughout the world and even in remote territories, and for centuries, men and women grow and share biological resources as well as knowledge which they use to practice medicine. This traditional know-how in medicine need to be protected, in particular against biopiracy and predatory patents in order to be able to develop, be valued or merely exist. To that end, in order to understand and clarify the field of possibilities, this study considers the protection of this traditional knowledge from various legal perspectives which go beyond national borders. This study first undertakes to define what a traditional know-how in medicine is and to establish a historic and legal overview. Then, it explores the protective possibilities and the pitfalls of intellectual property laws as well as the numerous existing legal openings. Among these are presented sui generis legislations and major international agreements, to the rank of which emerge the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and the Nagoya Protocol, described in a heterogeneous way by several nations into their legislation. In order to achieve these conclusions, this research relied on a main thread stretched out between two iconic countries, France and China.

Development of a hydrocarbon reservoir requires information about the type of fluid that saturates the pore space, and the permeability distribution that determines how the fluid can be extracted. The presence of fractures in a reservoir can be useful for obtaining this information. The main objectives of this thesis are to investigate how fracturing can be detected remotely using exploration seismology. Fracturing will effect seismic data in a number of ways. Firstly, if the fractures are aligned preferentially in some direction, the medium will exhibit long wavelength anisotropy. In turn, if wave propagation is not aligned with one of the symmetry axes of the effective medium then shear wave splitting will depend upon the properties of the fracture filling fluid. Secondly, elastic waves will experience attenuation and dispersion due to scattering and wave-induced fluid flow between the fractures and matrix porosity. This occurs because the fractures are more compliant than the background medium and therefore there will be a pressure gradient formed during passage of the wave, causing fluid to flow between fractures and background. If the direction of shear-wave propagation is not perpendicular or parallel to the plane of fracturing, the wave polarized in the plane perpendicular to the fractures is a quasi-shear mode, and therefore the shear-wave splitting will be sensitive to the fluid bulk modulus. / The magnitude of this sensitivity depends upon the extent to which fluid pressure can equilibrate between pores and fractures during the period of the deformation. In this thesis I use the anisotropic Gassmann equations and existing formulations for the excess compliance due to fracturing to estimate the splitting of vertically propagating shear-waves as a function of the fluid modulus for a porous medium with a single set of dipping fractures and with two conjugate fracture sets dipping with opposite dips to the vertical. This is achieved using two alternative approaches. In the first approach it is assumed that the deformation taking place is quasi-static. That is, the frequency of the elastic disturbance is low enough to allow enough time for fluid to flow between both the fractures and the pore space throughout the medium. In the second approach I assume that the frequency is low enough to allow fluid flow between a fracture set and the surrounding pore space, but high enough so that there is not enough time during the period of the elastic disturbance for fluid flow between different fracture sets to occur. It is found that the second approach yields a much stronger dependency of shear-wave splitting on the fluid modulus than the first one. This is a consequence of the fact that at higher wave frequencies there is not enough time for fluid pressure to equilibrate and therefore the elastic properties of the fluid have a greater effect on the magnitude of the shear-wave splitting. I conclude that the dependency of the shear-wave splitting on the fluid bulk modulus will be at its minimum for quasi-static deformations, and will increase with increasing wave frequency. / In order to treat the problem of dispersion and attenuation due to wave-induced fluid flow I consider interaction of a normally incident time-harmonic longitudinal plane wave with a circular crack imbedded in a porous medium governed by Biot’s equations of dynamic poroelasticity. The problem is formulated in cylindrical coordinates as a system of dual integral equations for the Hankel transform of the wave field, which is then reduced to a single Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. It is found that the scattering that takes place is predominantly due to wave induced fluid flow between the pores and the crack. The scattering magnitude depends on the size of the crack relative to the slow wave wavelength and has its maximum value when they are of the same order. I conclude that this poroelastic effect should not be neglected, at least at seismic frequencies. Using the solution of the scattering problem for a single crack and multiple-scattering theory I estimate the attenuation and dispersion of elastic waves taking place in a porous medium containing a sparse distribution of such cracks. I obtain from this analysis an effective velocity which at low frequencies reduces to the known static Gassmann result and a characteristic attenuation peak at the frequency such that the crack size and the slow wave wavelength are of the same order. / When comparing with a similar model in which multiple scattering effects are neglected I and that there is agreement at high frequencies and discrepancies at low frequencies. I conclude that the interaction between cracks should not be neglected at low frequencies, even in the limit of weak crack density. Since the models only agree with each other at high frequencies, when the time available for fluid diffusion is small, I conclude that the interaction between cracks that takes place as a result of fluid diffusion is negligible at high frequencies. I also compare my results with a model for spherical inclusions and find that the attenuation for spherical inclusions has exactly the same dependence upon frequency, but a difference in magnitude that depends upon frequency. Since the attenuation curves are very close at low frequencies I conclude that the effective medium properties are not sensitive to the shape of an inclusion at wavelengths that are large compared to the inclusion size. However at frequencies such that the wavelength is comparable to or smaller than the inclusion size the effective properties are sensitive to the greater compliance of the flat cracks, and more attenuation occurs at a given frequency as a result.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität St. Gallen, 2001.

Zugl.: Augsburg, Univ., Diss., 2004 u.d.T.: Sessing, Gerhard: Wissenstransfer zwischen Organisationen - eine Konzeption der Erfolgsfaktoren im Wissenstransferprozess

Jena, University, Diss., 2007.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2005--München.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität St. Gallen, 2005.