Suchergebnisse

Whether a contract clause may permit a patent owner to continuously collect royalty payments from a licensee after the expiration of its patent rights is a highly controversial issue in practice. Some believe that because patent rights are a kind of monopoly granted by the government, it shall not be extended after expiration; otherwise, it shall be regarded as patent misuse and/or unfair competition as the case may be. Nonetheless, others believe that this kind of clause is actually beneficial to a licensee because the licensee is allowed to make royalty payments throughout the whole patent term and even after expiration, which is helpful in terms of innovation. Regarding such debate, the Supreme Court of the United States adopts the view of the former, strongly opposing the collection of royalties after a patent's expiration. Recently in Kimble v. Marvel, the Supreme Court reviewed this issue all over again. The Supreme Court reasoned that, although its former judgment might have certain flaws, there are no special justifiable reasons to correct such former judgment, and according to the doctrine of stare decisis, a court must abide by its former judgment in order to maintain the reliability of judicial decisions. The Supreme Court leaves such issues to the hand of Congress, waiting for future amendments to the law. Hence, this issue has not yet been settled and needs further clarification by the judicial and legislative branches of the United States. The author believes that such clauses might be simultaneously good and bad for innovation and economic efficiency depending upon the circumstances and, therefore, the correct approach is to examine such clauses based on the "rule of reason" principle. The author offers suggestions regarding this issue after comparing different views and approaches adopted by the relevant authorities of the United States and Taiwan.

Whether a contract clause may permit a patent owner to continuously collect royalty payments from a licensee after the expiration of its patent rights is a highly controversial issue in practice. Some believe that because patent rights are a kind of monopoly granted by the government, it shall not be extended after expiration; otherwise, it shall be regarded as patent misuse and/or unfair competition as the case may be. Nonetheless, others believe that this kind of clause is actually beneficial to a licensee because the licensee is allowed to make royalty payments throughout the whole patent term and even after expiration, which is helpful in terms of innovation. Regarding such debate, the Supreme Court of the United States adopts the view of the former, strongly opposing the collection of royalties after a patent's expiration. Recently in Kimble v. Marvel, the Supreme Court reviewed this issue all over again. The Supreme Court reasoned that, although its former judgment might have certain flaws, there are no special justifiable reasons to correct such former judgment, and according to the doctrine of stare decisis, a court must abide by its former judgment in order to maintain the reliability of judicial decisions. The Supreme Court leaves such issues to the hand of Congress, waiting for future amendments to the law. Hence, this issue has not yet been settled and needs further clarification by the judicial and legislative branches of the United States. The author believes that such clauses might be simultaneously good and bad for innovation and economic efficiency depending upon the circumstances and, therefore, the correct approach is to examine such clauses based on the "rule of reason" principle. The author offers suggestions regarding this issue after comparing different views and approaches adopted by the relevant authorities of the United States and Taiwan.

This article focuses on the educational quality of the newly emerged quasi-state schools for rural migrant children in urban China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 government officers, school leaders, teachers and migrant parents in Shanghai. Adopting a theoretical perspective of policy as a temporary settlement of interests, the article deconstructs the power relations that constructed the disadvantaged positionality of these schools in the local school system. What can be identified from the empirical data is the emergence of an "interim quasi-state school system" with three interrelated features: it belongs to the state sector, offers quasi-state education and has an interim nature. Under the local government's low-cost and inferior schooling approach, the whole system is treated as an emergency mechanism for solving the floating children's schooling problem, rather than as regular schools offering high quality education. While realising the children's right to education, this system does not guarantee them a "good" education.

Abstract
While the concept of hua has always been integrated with China and Chinese, huaren and huaqiao and the like have different identities, involving profound historical, social, and cultural significance as well as the core values and attributes of Chineseness. Based on a semiotic approach, this paper explores the special relations between hua as a semiotic symbol and the connotations implied in relation to translation studies through typical case analyses and personal experience shared. Certain meaningful implications may be revealed from three aspects, namely the connotations of hua in the light of a semiotic approach, Chinese identities and Chineseness, and the "signifier," the "signified," and their agreement.

Dredging engineering projects are complex because they involve greater uncertainty from the natural environment, social needs, government policy and many stakeholders. Engineering companies submit tenders that draw on similar cases undertaken in recent years. However, weather, earthquakes, typhoons and other disasters often change landforms. Therefore, evaluating the duration of dredging projects with reference to only a few previous cases is inadequate, often leading to an unnecessarily long construction duration if the scope of the project is not clearly defined at the early phase. The goal of this investigation aimed to estimate project duration at the beginning of construction and the probability of risk. Evolutionary machine learning was used to build a deterministic model of dredging project duration. Monte Carlo simulation was then utilized to establish the probabilistic distribution of the project duration based on historical patterns. The analytical outputs are displayed through a graphical user interface that provides project coordinators with a means of assessing the uncertainty of project duration in the initial phase of the project. This study will provide a practical reference for contractors and the Water Resources Agency.

This study examined teacher perceptions of principals' social justice leadership and their effect on teachers' academic optimism in Taiwan, along with the moderating effects of teachers' gender, position, and school size. While a total sample of 1,470 elementary and secondary school teachers were surveyed, this study applied a multidimensional framework to examine social justice leadership. The results indicate that teachers perceive principals' social justice leadership to a high degree. Second, teachers' perceptions of social justice leadership significantly vary by gender, position, and school size. Third, social justice leadership positively relates to teachers' academic optimism. Fourth, gender has a moderating effect on the relationship of social justice leadership and teachers' academic optimism, which suggests that the practice of principals' social justice leadership is influenced by the inherent culture, at least to an extent.

China's impressive growth has been accompanied by huge rural-urban divide and social sacrifice of many including rural-urban migrants. Reflecting on the documentary Last Train Home (2009) by Lixin Fan, this paper identifies and examines the life of rural-urban migrants in China in terms of poverty-reduction, child-care, education and equal opportunities for a better life. By comparing the seemingly difficult and tragic life of the Zhang family against statistical facts, it shows that their suffering and struggles are common to most migrants. In essence, by creating an interactive dialogue between the film and the economic reality in China, this paper highlights the severe constraints on the Chinese peasantry and discusses the implications of limited choices and social injustice towards rural-urban migrants. It argues that the inequality in opportunities and the lack of social care for migrants has created huge social cleavage that not only reduces social welfare but may also impede further development.