Licensing Complementary Patents: “Patent Trolls”, Market Structure, and “Excessive” Royalties

The infamous Blackberry case brought new attention to so-called “patent trolls” and began the general association of trolls with “non-practicing” patent holders. This has had important legal consequences: Namely, patent holders have been denied injunctive relief because they did not practice the patents themselves. In this paper we analyze how patent holders –– both non-practicing and vertically integrated –– choose their royalties depending on the structure of the upstream and downstream markets and the types of licensing agreements available. We show that a vertically integrated firm has an incentive to raise its rivals’ costs and to restrict entry on the downstream market; incentives that do not hold for non-integrated patent holders. An automatic presumption that a non-integrated patent holder will charge higher royalties than a vertically integrated company is therefore unfounded. Whether a company charges “excessive” royalties depends on whether there is scope for hold-up, either because of sunk investments on the part of potential licensees or because of “weak” patents held by the licensor. These factors are orthogonal to whether patent holders are practicing or no

Licensing Complementary Patents: “Patent Trollsâ€, Market Structure, and “Excessive†Royalties

The infamous Blackberry case brought new attention to so-called “patent trolls†and began the general association of trolls with “non-practicing†patent holders. This has had important legal consequences: Namely, patent holders have been denied injunctive relief because they did not practice the patents themselves. In this paper we analyze how patent holders –– both non-practicing and vertically integrated –– choose their royalties depending on the structure of the upstream and downstream markets and the types of licensing agreements available. We show that a vertically integrated firm has an incentive to raise its rivals’ costs and to restrict entry on the downstream market; incentives that do not hold for non-integrated patent holders. An automatic presumption that a non-integrated patent holder will charge higher royalties than a vertically integrated company is therefore unfounded. Whether a company charges “excessive†royalties depends on whether there is scope for hold-up, either because of sunk investments on the part of potential licensees or because of “weak†patents held by the licensor. These factors are orthogonal to whether patent holders are practicing or not

Experiences and Perspectives of Immigrant Mothers in Norway

In just one generation, Norway has witnessed a five-fold increase in its immigrant population. Along with the increase in the immigrant population, the number of immigrant children who receive child welfare measures has increased disproportionately. Social work in a multicultural society demands different skills from practitioners than work within a more homogeneous society. In order to understand their ethnic minority clients, workers must be aware of the difficulties these clients face on a daily basis. This research aims to hear and represent the experiences and perspectives of immigrant mothers from a strengths-based perspective, and thereby provide a stronger evidence base for social work practice. A qualitative phenomenological design was chosen for the study. Data from two focus group interviews and two in-depth individual interviews has been used. Theoretically, the research was framed by concepts of parenting, acculturation, cultural translation and resilience. Findings revealed that informants faced challenges related to them both as individuals as well as in their role as mothers during their integration process. They dealt with these challenges by using both their individual resources and resources in their environment. The differences between the collectivistic oriented home society and the individual oriented Norwegian society, the loss of their social network, the authoritarian ways of child raising versus a democratic family structure, and children acculturating faster than parents were all salient themes next to language barriers and challenges related to the bureaucratic system. At times, the differences between cultures led to the emergence of new traditions or ways of raising children, which demonstrates that neither culture nor child raising is static, but is instead influenced by the social environment.Masteroppgave i barnevernMABARN351MAPS-BAR

Genetic and environmental determinants of pulmonary outcome in term-born and preterm children

In this work, we present data on early lung development in term-born and preterm children from infancy to early childhood. We showed that our equipment for multiple-breath washout reliably measured lung volumes. Using both this newly validated and other established equipment, we were able to investigate several aspects of early lung development. Firstly, we investigated early lung growth in term-born children. Here, we observed a weak tracking of lung volume throughout young childhood, and no association of lung volume and function of larger airways. Secondly, we investigated early lung development in preterm children in infancy, at school age and over time. In infancy, we tested whether non-invasive lung function measurements could improve prediction of later respiratory symptoms when compared to established predictive tools, but found no improvement. However, we observed an altered breathing pattern in those preterm infants with later wheeze. At early school age, we investigated ventilation inhomogeneity in preterm children, and found differences in the peripheral lung regions compared to term-born controls. Investigation of lung volumes over time detected excessive pulmonary catch-up growth from infancy to early childhood in preterm children, and reduced physiological variability of breathing pattern. Children born prematurely showed higher relative lung volume increase when born at younger gestational age. In these observational studies, respiratory health and growth of peripheral lung structure beyond infancy did not seem to be determined by therapeutic inter- ventions, but by prematurity per se

A Gestalt in primary visual cortex? : applying neurophysiological methods to capture a psychophysical phenomenon

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts." This idea has been brought forward by psychologists such as Max Wertheimer who formulated Gestalt laws that describe our perception. One law is that of collinearity: elements that correspond in their local orientation to their global axis of alignment form a collinear line, compared to a noncollinear line where local and global orientations are orthogonal. Psychophysical studies revealed a perceptual advantage for collinear over non-collinear stimulus context. It was suggested that this behavioral finding could be related to underlying neuronal mechanisms already in the primary visual cortex (V1). Studies have shown that neurons in V1 are linked according to a common fate: cells responding to collinearly aligned contours are predominantly interconnected by anisotropic long-range lateral connections. In the cat, the same holds true for visual interhemispheric connections. In the present study we aimed to test how the perceptual advantage of a collinear line is reflected in the anatomical properties within or between the two primary visual cortices. We applied two neurophysiological methods, electrode and optical recording, and reversibly deactivated the topographically corresponding contralateral region by cooling in eight anesthetized cats. In electrophysiology experiments our results revealed that influences by stimulus context significantly depend on a unit’s orientation preference. Vertical preferring units had on average a higher spike rate for collinear over non-collinear context. Horizontal preferring units showed the opposite result. Optical imaging experiments confirmed these findings for cortical areas assigned to vertical orientation preference. Further, when deactivating the contralateral region the spike rate for horizontal preferring units in the intact hemisphere significantly decreased in response to a collinear stimulus context. Most of the optical imaging experiments revealed a decrease in cortical activity in response to either stimulus context crossing the vertical midline. In conclusion, our results support the notion that modulating influences from stimulus context can be quite variable. We suggest that the kind of influence may depend on a cell’s orientation preference. The perceptual advantage of a collinear line as one of the Gestalt laws proposes is not uniformly represented in the activity of individual cells in V1. However, it is likely that the combined activity of many V1 neurons serves to activate neurons further up the processing stream which eventually leads to the perceptual phenomenon."Das Ganze ist mehr als die Summe seiner Teile." Dieser Ausspruch wurde besonders durch Gestaltpsychologen wie Max Wertheimer geprägt. Es wurden Gestaltgesetze formuliert, welche unsere Wahrnehmung beschreiben. Eines dieser Gesetze betrifft die Kollinearität: Objekte, die in ihrer lokalen Orientierung mit der globalen Achse ihrer Anordnung übereinstimmen, bilden eine kollineare Linie. Diese wird im Gegensatz zu einer nicht-kollinearen Linie, bei der die lokale und globale Orientierung orthogonal zueinander sind, als "bessere" Gestalt wahrgenommen (Wertheimer, 1923). Psychophysische Studien konnten diesen Wahrnehmungsvorteil einer kollinearen Linie bestätigen. Ein gängiger Stimulus zur experimentellen Testung ist ein Gabor Element, ein sinusoidales Streifenmuster gewichtet durch eine Gausfunktion. Versuchspersonen konnten eine Linie kollinear angeordneter Gabors umgeben von zufällig angeordneten Gabors schneller wieder erkennen, als wenn die Elemente nicht-kollinear angeordnet waren (Field & Hess, 1993). Weiterhin konnte gezeigt werden, dass ein zentraler Gabor schon bei sehr geringem Kontrast erkannt wird, wenn dieser von anderen gleich orientierten Elementen entlang der kollinearen Achse umgeben war, nicht jedoch, wenn die Elemente orthogonal zu ihrer lokalen Orientierung angeordnet waren (Polat & Sagi, 1994). Die Forscher hatten außerdem zeigen können, dass die Elemente optimaler weise 3 λ (lies: Lambda) von einander entfernt sein sollten, ein Wert der die sinusoidale Wellenlänge des Streifenmusters beschreibt (Polat & Sagi, 1993). Den Forschern gemein war der Versuch, ihre Erkenntnisse auf Verhaltensebene neuronalen Grundlagen zuordnen zu können. Es wurde festgestellt, dass neuronale Zellen im primären visuellen Kortex (V1) bereits eine entscheidende Rolle für den beobachteten Wahrnehmungsvorteil kollinearer Linien spielen könnten. ..

The Performance of MLEM for Dynamic Imaging From Simulated Few-View, Multi-Pinhole SPECT

Stationary small-animal SPECT systems are being developed for rapid dynamic imaging from limited angular views. This work quantified, through simulations, the performance of Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization (MLEM) for reconstructing a time-activity curve (TAC) with uptake duration of a few seconds from a stationary, three-camera multi-pinhole SPECT system. The study also quantified the benefits of a heuristic method of initializing the reconstruction with a prior image reconstructed from a conventional number of views, for example from data acquired during the late-study portion of the dynamic TAC. We refer to MLEM reconstruction initialized by a prior-image initial guess (IG) as MLEMig. The effect of the prior-image initial guess on the depiction of contrast between two regions of a static phantom was quantified over a range of angular sampling schemes. A TAC was modeled from the experimentally measured uptake of 99mTc-hexamethylpropyleneamine oxime (HMPAO) in the rat lung. The resulting time series of simulated images was quantitatively analyzed with respect to the accuracy of the estimated exponential washin and washout parameters. In both static and dynamic phantom studies, the prior-image initial guess improved the spatial depiction of the phantom, for example improved definition of the cylinder boundaries and more accurate quantification of relative contrast between cylinders. For example in the dynamic study, there was ~ 50% error in relative contrast for MLEM reconstructions compared to ~ 25-30% error for MLEMig. In the static phantom study, the benefits of the initial guess decreased as the number of views increased. The prior-image initial guess introduced an additive offset in the reconstructed dynamic images, likely due to biases introduced by the prior image. MLEM initialized with a uniform initial guess yielded images that faithfully reproduced the time dependence of the simulated TAC; there were no s- atistically significant differences in the mean exponential washin/washout parameters estimated from MLEM reconstructions compared to the true values. Washout parameters estimated from MLEMig reconstructions did not differ significantly from the true values, however the estimated washin parameter differed significantly from the true value in some cases. Overall, MLEM reconstruction from few views and a uniform initial guess accurately quantified the time dependance of the TAC while introducing errors in the spatial depiction of the object. Initializing the reconstruction with a late-study initial guess improved spatial accuracy while decreasing temporal accuracy in some cases

An examination of local newspaper photographs of the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973

In February of 1973, the American Indian Movement occupied the small village of Wounded Knee. AIM’s purpose was twofold, to increase awareness of the plight of Native Americans in the area and to remove the Tribal Chairman, Richard Wilson. AIM used the historic site of Wounded Knee and stereotypical images of Indians in hopes of gaining national attention through the media. AIM thought this media attention was necessary in order to bring about change. Portrayals of Native Americans in the media have for the most part been stereotypical. Evidence of this can be found in the extensive research on Native American stereotypes. The previous research has focused mainly on films, but there is evidence of Native American stereotypes in the print and broadcast media. The following research examined news photographs of the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. The sources of these photographs were the Alliance Times Herald, the Rapid City Journal, and the Chadron Record. Each photograph was examined using five categories: the scene, the subject, the portrayal, the camera perspective and whether or not it was stereotypical. In addition, six photographs were analyzed in detail to give a close up view of stereotypical photographs versus images that were not stereotypical. The scenes of the photographs most often showed confrontation on both sides of the dispute, but never showed either side actually being fired upon or firing upon another. Areas of relative safety were pictured a third of the time even though gunfire was a regular occurrence during the occupation. Native Americans were most often the subject of the images. The portrayal of the occupation most often showed fatigue or relative safety. Only one photograph of a life-threatening situation was published. This is not a completely accurate portrayal since two people were killed and one left paralyzed during different exchanges of gunfire. The camera perspective was usually close up shots, with normal views being used with almost the same frequency. Surprisingly, only 25% of the photographs were stereotypical. The savage warrior stereotype was most often found in the stereotypical images. Differences were found in the newspapers’ photographic coverage of Wounded Knee. The Chadron Record ran photographs related to Wounded Knee but none that were taken at Wounded Knee during the occupation. The Alliance Times Herald ran mostly close up shots that conveyed emotion. The Rapid City Journal, which published the most photographs, published a variety of photographs from government military equipment to groups of Native Americans demonstrating. In general, these images show that a confrontation took place, but they do not show the life-threatening situations that were common during the occupation. The images convey a lopsided battle between Native Americans and the government. Images of helicopters, armored personnel carriers and tanks, all belonging to the government, make it clear that Native Americans were the underdogs. Some stereotypes were found in the photographs with the savage warrior stereotype the most common