Trademarks, Certification Marks and Technical Standards

The names of many technical standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and DVD have become household terms known throughout the developed world. This chapter describes different approaches that have been taken with respect to the naming and legal protection of technical standards, ranging from those that are wholly unregulated to those that are administered under strict certification and compliance regimes. It concludes by questioning the need for aggressive protection of marks that exist largely to inform consumers about technical product features rather than the source of standards themselves

Visual User Interface for PDAs

This report is a part of a diploma work, conducted as a part of a Master of Science degree. The diploma work consists of a preliminary study, two case studies, a user study, a paper and this report. It was created at the Linköping University for the department of Science and Technology, in cooperation with Unilever Research in the UK, and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. Hand-held, mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular in today’s wireless world. While trying to pack all the possible information into a small window, a nightmarish scenario is created for the interface designer to deal with. The goal for this project was to investigate different Visual User Interfaces (VUIs)on PDAs, and how to apply desktop interaction techniques to PDAs. A VUI model based on Zooming User Interface (ZUI) techniques, to adapt two complete different visualisation application areas; on-line brand-based shopping and flood warning system for PDAs, is presented. The on-line brand- based shopping was evaluated in a benchmark usability study comparing it to traditional PC based on-line shopping

Secondary Task Workload Test Bench – 2TB : final report

The main aim of this study was to investigate a selection of commonly used performance indicators (PIs) that have been reported to be sensitive to distraction and workload. More specifically, the PIs were tested for their ability to differentiate between task modalities (visual, cognitive and haptic) and task difficulty (easy, medium and hard). It was investigated whether possible differences were constant across two traffic situations (with/without lead vehicle) and two driving simulators. The experiment was conducted in the VTI Driving Simulator III, an advanced moving-base simulator, and in the Volvo Car Corporation driving simulator, an advanced fixed-base simulator. Both simulators were equipped with Smart Eye Pro eye tracking systems. A visual, a cognitive and a haptic secondary task were chosen to test the ability of the PIs to distinguish between the tasks’ loading on different modalities. Some of the main results from the study were: There were only minor differences between the two simulators for driving behaviour as described by longitudinal PIs. There was no overall offset, and the main difference was that the visual task led to stronger speed reductions in the moving-base simulator, which influenced both the mean speed and the speeding index. Regarding lateral PIs, major differences between the two simulators were found, both as a general offset and for those factor combinations that include modality and task difficulty level. With the visual or the haptic task active, the drivers positioned themselves further to the left and the variation in lateral position was higher in the fixed-base simulator. The number of lane crossings did not differ considerably between the simulators, but the lane departure area was larger on average in the fixed-base simulator, again influenced by modality, with the largest lane departure areas for the visual task, and in the case of the fixed-base simulator for the haptic task as well. Most of the eye movement related PIs had a general offset between the simulators. The drivers in the fixed-base simulator accumulated more time with their eyes off the road, especially during the visual and the cognitive tasks, while the drivers in the moving-base simulator cast longer single glances at the display

Public Law, European Constitutionalism and Copyright in Standards

Should technical standards decided and published by official Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) and referred to in Regulations, Directives or, generally, in EU law be regarded as “law” that must be accessible to the public, or could these standards still be private goods, licensed for royalties and, indeed, only accessible by a few? Access to technical standards may be the next hot topic for the European Standard Setting Organisations (SSOs) and the EU Commission. Some SSOs, as a way to finance their activities to develop technical standards, may charge firms or third persons to access and make use of the technical standards produced

Standardization, open source and innovation: sketching the effect of IPR policies

Open Source and standardization can be described as two “stewards of innovation.” Although practically two different ecosystems with diverging sets of rules and objectives, they, however, meet in their purpose to push the frontier of innovation. The latest technological developments are increasingly incentivizing firms and individuals participating in these ecosystems to work more closely together. However, under whose rules? And with what consequences for the innovation ecosystem? In this contribution, I try to sketch answers to these and related questions