Human Resources Management in the Knowledge Management

Knowledge is increasingly claimed to be a key critical resource and source of competitive advantage in the modern global economy, especially with the rise of the service economy, the growth in the number of ‘knowledge workers’, the increasingly rapid flow of global information, and the growing recognition of the importance of intellectual capital and intellectual property rights. Knowledge, with its intangible aspects, is becoming a defining characteristic of economic activities, as opposed to tangibles such as goods, services or production processes. The rise of the knowledge economy has seen a proliferation of information and communication technologies, coupled with greater organizational complexity, the growth of virtual and global organizations and rapid change. This in turn requires drastic change within HRM to respond to changing demands of the knowledge economy.human resources management, knowledge management, knowledge economy

Draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Recognition of Judgments in Intellectual Property Matters

This proposal is meant to spur the intellectual property bar to consider whether it would be desirable to create a regime for international enforcement of intellectual property law judgments. Such a convention could be adopted under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ) or through the World Trade Organization ( WTO ). There are several reasons to believe that an instrument drafted specifically for intellectual property disputes would be particularly advantageous. First, for intellectual property disputes, efficiency should be a principal target. Modern distribution methods, particularly satellite and Internet transmissions, make it increasing likely that intellectual property rights will be exploited simultaneously in more than one territory. The ability to consolidate claims arising from these usages in one court, with the expectation that the judgment of that court will be recognized in all convention States, could reduce costs for all sides, conserve judicial resources on an international basis, and promote consistent outcomes. Second, a convention drafted for intellectual property disputes can take account of issues uniquely raised by the intangibility of the rights in issue. For example, an intellectual property agreement can consider the ability of a potential defendant to gain litigation advantages through the choice of the location of the activities that give rise to infringement. In certain situations, the propriety of expanding jurisdiction depends on the possibility of inconsistent outcomes; a convention tailored to intellectual property can specify what that term means in the context of public goods. An instrument for intellectual property litigation can also deal specifically with matters of unique concern to the creative community. The strong link between culture on the one hand, and intellectual production and utilization on the other, means that the territoriality of these rights is of crucial importance: individual nations must be able to retain some control over the local conditions under which these products are created, exploited, and accessed. At the same time, an approach that creates new avenues for cross-cultural enrichment needs to be considered. For example, the circumstances where trans-border injunctions are permissible can be specified to include consideration of cultural, health, and safety issues. Other issues of prime interest to the information industries can also be considered: provisions on contract disputes can be tailored to deal with mass-market contracts, which are becoming prevalent in certain intellectual property transactions; provisions on infringement can be made sensitive to the interests of the new media, such as Internet Service Providers. Most important, the convention can be confined to rights covered by the intellectual property part of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( TRIPs Agreement ) and open to signature only to countries that have joined the WTO and fully implemented the TRIPs Agreement. Since these are countries that have agreed to enforce intellectual property law and are subject to dispute resolution proceedings if they fail to do so, these limitations would reduce concerns that forum shopping will undermine the delicate balance that each nation has struck between the rights of intellectual property users and owners. And although dispute resolution under the WTO cannot provide litigants with a substitute for a centralized and authoritative appellate body (such as the US Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice), it can provide assurance of transparent and efficient judicial process, along with institutional mechanisms (such as dispute resolution panels, the Dispute Settlement Board, and the Council for TRIPs) for examining intellectual property law as it develops through consolidated adjudication of multinational disputes

Why the Customer Isn’t Always Right: Producer-Based Limits on Rights Accretion in Trademark

In this article the author responds to James Gibson’s article Risk Aversion and Rights Accretion in Intellectual Property Law, which offers valuable insights into the extra-judicial dynamics that have contributed to the seemingly unending expansion of copyright and trademark rights over the past few decades. Her response focuses on the trademark side of that expansion. The theoretical basis for granting trademark rights is that, if consumers perceive that a mark or other symbol indicates that a single source is responsible for a product or service—whether through physical production, licensing, sponsorship, or other approval—then the law should give effect to that consumer perception. Trademark rights thus protect consumers from deception and producers from unfair competition. When it comes to expansive rights claims, trademark’s dual nature is its strength: core trademark doctrines recognize the legitimate interests of producers as limits on the licensing-based rights accretion that a pure consumer protection theory could justify

Concept Generation

Concept Generation is an event where participants create new innovations from market led criteria and trade this intellectual property for beer and peanuts. This critical and comedic project engages participants with a design process appropriated from surrealist techniques, in order to glibly mine the depths of product and service niches, where creative industries have not yet ventured. This workshop investigates the spectrum between creative industries and aesthetic art practice and asks participants to form their own critical position. The social contract between the host and the participant is transparent – the event is free, but participants must create marketable ideas to pitch to the artist, in order to exchange their concept for a beer. The artist has sole right over the intellectual property. This exchange mirrors the exploitation of precarious creative workers, for whom work and lifestyle blend, where a workshop can also become a party. Concept Generation presents the mutability of work and leisure, of consumption and production, of art practice and creative industry, and of creative thinking and marketing. In a satire of ideation, participants are asked to sell their ridiculous idea, and many get carried away with the farce. Production is the only imperative, and the more ridiculous the ideas are, the more we believe they might actually succeed

COMPARATION OF PRODUCTION AND SERVICE COSTS IN CROATIA AND COST REDUCTION MEASURES

Creating a product or service is carried out by the joint efforts of materials, labour and property and equipment. These elements are consumed in the business process, and therefore recognized in accounting system and financial statement as cost items. In order to achieve optimal balance between cost and revenues and consequently the best financial results it is necessary to manage cost. The knowledge of costs structure should constitute the starting point for any cost management activities. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the cost structure of production and service industry examples in Croatia. The study was conducted on a sample of 8,913 active companies operating in the sector of food and drinks production and intellectual services in Croatia. The results point to differences in the cost structure that have served as a base for proposed cost reduction measures for each of the analyzed industries

Draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Recognition of Judgments in Intellectual Property Matters

This proposal is meant to spur the intellectual property bar to consider whether it would be desirable to create a regime for international enforcement of intellectual property law judgments. Such a convention could be adopted under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ) or through the World Trade Organization ( WTO ). There are several reasons to believe that an instrument drafted specifically for intellectual property disputes would be particularly advantageous. First, for intellectual property disputes, efficiency should be a principal target. Modern distribution methods, particularly satellite and Internet transmissions, make it increasing likely that intellectual property rights will be exploited simultaneously in more than one territory. The ability to consolidate claims arising from these usages in one court, with the expectation that the judgment of that court will be recognized in all convention States, could reduce costs for all sides, conserve judicial resources on an international basis, and promote consistent outcomes. Second, a convention drafted for intellectual property disputes can take account of issues uniquely raised by the intangibility of the rights in issue. For example, an intellectual property agreement can consider the ability of a potential defendant to gain litigation advantages through the choice of the location of the activities that give rise to infringement. In certain situations, the propriety of expanding jurisdiction depends on the possibility of inconsistent outcomes; a convention tailored to intellectual property can specify what that term means in the context of public goods. An instrument for intellectual property litigation can also deal specifically with matters of unique concern to the creative community. The strong link between culture on the one hand, and intellectual production and utilization on the other, means that the territoriality of these rights is of crucial importance: individual nations must be able to retain some control over the local conditions under which these products are created, exploited, and accessed. At the same time, an approach that creates new avenues for cross-cultural enrichment needs to be considered. For example, the circumstances where trans-border injunctions are permissible can be specified to include consideration of cultural, health, and safety issues. Other issues of prime interest to the information industries can also be considered: provisions on contract disputes can be tailored to deal with mass-market contracts, which are becoming prevalent in certain intellectual property transactions; provisions on infringement can be made sensitive to the interests of the new media , such as Internet Service Providers. Most important, the convention can be confined to rights covered by the intellectual property part of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( TRIPs Agreement ) and open to signature only to countries that have joined the WTO and fully implemented the TRIPs Agreement. Since these are countries that have agreed to enforce intellectual property law and are subject to dispute resolution proceedings if they fail to do so, these limitations would reduce concerns that forum shopping will undermine the delicate balance that each nation has struck between the rights of intellectual property users and owners. And although dispute resolution under the WTO cannot provide litigants with a substitute for a centralized and authoritative appellate body (such as the US Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice), it can provide assurance of transparent and efficient judicial process, along with institutional mechanisms (such as dispute resolution panels, the Dispute Settlement Board, and the Council for TRIPs) for examining intellectual property law as it develops through consolidated adjudication of multinational disputes. This is a mixed convention. It describes bases of jurisdiction that are predicates to enforcement in all member States and it describes bases of jurisdiction that are prohibited in cases involving foreign habitual residents of member States. It leaves member States free to decide for themselves the conditions under which judgments predicated on other bases of jurisdiction are enforceable. Its principal innovations include: 1. Scope. The Convention would be open only to TRIPs implementers and, with the additions of performance rights in sound recordings, and domain names, it would cover the same rights covered by the TRIPs Agreement. 2. Jurisdiction. This Convention identifies a set of fora with adjudicatory authority over the parties. In part, this is a consequence of the commitment to consolidation and cooperation. The parties\u27 choices need not be narrowed if all courts seized with parallel litigation will, ultimately, consult with one another and with the parties to find the best place to adjudicate the entire dispute. Conversely, the courts and parties can select a better forum (in terms of convenience for the parties and witnesses, expertise of the decision maker, and relationship to the dispute) if there are several courts that enjoy adjudicatory authority. In part, this decision also emanates from the view that forum shopping in intellectual property disputes cannot, in any event, be controlled through personal jurisdiction rules: intangible rights and infringements can be reified in too many locations to make personal jurisdiction an effective limit on potential fora. 3. Contract disputes. Mass-market contracts (sometimes called shrinkwrap or click through agreements) are becoming increasingly common in intellectual property transactions. The enforceability of these agreements has been quite controversial and the Convention takes the position that the inability to negotiate does raise special concerns. Accordingly, the enforceability of any contract provision affecting the place of dispute resolution is subject to a requirement of negotiation or, in nonnegotiated contracts, reasonableness in the choice of forum. Factors taken into account in assessing the reasonableness of the chosen forum include whether, in the absence of a forum-selection clause, the chosen forum would have had jurisdiction over the nondrafting party. 4. Infringement actions. This instrument adapts jurisdictional doctrines regarding tort actions to tailor them to the context of intellectual property infringement and to the issues raised by the distribution of works in a digital environment. In addition, this proposal deals with new media defendants, such as Internet Service Providers. US law does not require special procedural protection for media defendants because substantive law has many explicit safeguards on the use of litigation to chill expression. In the absence of such safeguards in the domestic laws of every member State, it was thought necessary to create procedural protections in the form of immunity from suit in locations where contacts are purely passive. 5. Consolidation. A central insight animating this proposal is that efficient adjudication of intellectual property disputes is a benefit-to the parties, to the nations whose judicial resources would otherwise be redundantly utilized, and to the development of sound intellectual property law. Both US and European laws have mechanisms to promote consolidation, and the techniques of both systems are invoked here

Agro-innovation – path to agricultural entrepreneurship: feasibility study / Elias Kamaruzzaman … [et al.]

Technology changes will always be for the better, not only to the end users but also to the intellectual property owners of the technology and the implementers of the technology. The objective of this paper is to study the feasibility and viability for entrepreneurs to become service providers for the dispensation of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and supporting services such as aerial crop reconnaissance using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones. The methodology used for this study is SWOT Analysis. Both primary and secondary data is used for this analysis. This study finds that paddy farming employing drones is feasible. The beneficiaries of this study shall be the government, by way of lowering financial cost to subsidise the paddy planting, the farmers who no longer need the services of migrant workers, thus saving production cost, and finally the drone service providers and their downstream business associates who can engaged themselves in very lucrative businesses

Agro-innovation – path to agricultural entrepreneurship: feasibility study / Elias Kamaruzzaman … [et al.]

Technology changes will always be for the better, not only to the end users but also to the intellectual property owners of the technology and the implementers of the technology. The objective of this paper is to study the feasibility and viability for entrepreneurs to become service providers for the dispensation of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and supporting services such as aerial crop reconnaissance using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones. The methodology used for this study is SWOT Analysis. Both primary and secondary data is used for this analysis. This study finds that paddy farming employing drones is feasible. The beneficiaries of this study shall be the government, by way of lowering financial cost to subsidise the paddy planting, the farmers who no longer need the services of migrant workers, thus saving production cost, and finally the drone service providers and their downstream business associates who can engaged themselves in very lucrative businesses

The impact of participation within formal standardization on firm performance

Several studies highlight the economic benefits of standards, while the benefit of taking part in standardization remains a rather unexplored mystery to date. In theory, standard setters not only benefit from the possibility to monitor and shape the development of standards but also access a wide range of knowledge sources in the standards committee. Therefore, we investigate how the participation within formal standardization is related to the performance of 1561 German companies. A Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated in order to use the Solow-residuals as indicator for the firm performance. Participation within formal standardization is measured by the number of committee seats at the German Institute for Standardization (DIN). Our results suggest that participation within formal standardization is positively related to firm performance in the manufacturing sector. In the service sector, no clear evidence for such a relationship is found. This finding also holds true when we test if a service providers’ intellectual property is well protected through patents

Innovation and Development in the Age of Climate Change Adaptation: Open or Closed?

Change Adaptation: Open or Closed? Paper read at the Second African International Economic Law Network Conference, 7-8 March 2013, Wits School of Law, Johannesburg, South Africa. In a time of rapid convergence of technologies, goods, services, hardware, software, the traditional classifications that informed past treaties fail to remove legal uncertainty, or advance welfare and innovation. As a result, we turn our attention to the role and needs of the public domain at the interface of existing intellectual property rights and new modes of creation, production and distribution of goods and services. The concept of open culture would have it that knowledge should be spread freely and its growth should come from further developing existing works on the basis of sharing and collaboration without the shackles of intellectual property. Intellectual property clauses find their way into regional, multilateral, bilateral and free trade agreements more often than not, and can cause public discontent and incite unrest. Many of these intellectual property clauses raise the bar on protection beyond the clauses found in the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In this paper we address the question of the protection and development of the public domain in service of open innovation in accord with Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in light of the Objectives (Article 7) and Principles (Article 8) set forth in TRIPS. Once areas of divergence and reinforcement between the intellectual property regime and human rights have been discussed, we will enter into options that allow for innovation and prosperity in the global south. We then conclude by discussing possible policy developments