This chapter draws on empirical research that demonstrates that utility model protection can address differential capture or appropriability needs for a firm’s portfolio of inventions in terms of time and cost. We propose that a “zone of appropriability preference” exists when utility models and standard patents overlap, and this zone provides important opportunities to firms with global intellectual property portfolios. Using the European Patent Office’s PATSTAT patent data and a novel experimental construct that tracks inventions that are pursued as a utility model instead of a standard patent, we demonstrate that firms appear to seek utility model protection when their overall appropriability needs differ by region. We make the case that a firm may choose standard patent protection in one region and utility model protection in another, even though standard patent protection is available in both settings

The global landscape for existing utility model rights is a helpful starting point to the discussion on utility model innovation policy at the country-level as well as firm strategy. WIPO data indicates that approximately 3.0 million utility model applications were filed globally in 2022, a growth rate of 2.9% from the previous year and close to the global total of 3.5 million applications for standard patents. Only about one-half of the world’s countries provide for utility model systems, yet companies from around the world acquire these rights. Utility models are important players in the IP environment, and the unique qualities of the system and differential representation require specific analysis. In this chapter, we review existing empirical data and present additional data regarding UM filings and litigation worldwide. Our purpose is to provide background and context for the more detailed discussion in the remaining chapters in this book.

Chapter 1 offers an in-depth, historically based discussion of the research on emoji and on matters of general concern regarding this unique type of visual character, along with a rationale for the need for a comprehensive treatment of emoji in education. The authors describe the reasons for focusing on higher education, particularly health professional education. They begin by examining the background work on emoji theory and research and offer initial insights into the discourse and semiotic functions of the emoji code. Such functions form the basis for considering the emoji code as a teaching tool that may be used to craft hybrid literacy-focused instruction (textual and visual). The discursive and recursive properties of emoji form the basis of semioliteracy, a theory that one of the authors (Petcoff) contends offers a basis for emoji use in developmental reading and writing and across several higher education academic fields. Specifically, the chapter addresses the potential use of emoji as a literacy instruction tool in both higher education and healthcare professional education.

Aristotle complained that though the original intention of the Laws was to institute a form of political system ‘more common’ to cities (presumably ‘more capable of being shared in’ by political communities generally), the social and political system Plato actually worked out in the dialogue turned out in the end not very different from the ideal articulated in the Republic. This chapter agrees with Aristotle’s identification of two projects in the Laws. But it argues that Plato makes it clear that the dialogue needs to develop (in relatively idealizing mode) a scheme for producing a citizenry educated for virtue as its primary aim, but that as a subordinate task it must also provide a constitutional framework that has sound empirical and historical credentials and a system of law providing for coercion as well as persuasion. There is just not much supply of persons eager to be as good as possible as fast as possible, and for the ‘tough eggs’ among them an elaborate penal system has to be devised. How Plato delivers on these two projects is then explored in some detail. The chapter concludes by sketching in summary the way both are fitted into a single plan.

Chapter 8 deals with the potential remedies available to protesters when their constitutional rights are violated. It focuses on damages remedies intended to make protesters whole for such injuries. The law of public protest severely restricts such remedies. Under principles of “qualified immunity,” the law generally immunizes all but the most incompetent officers from civil liability. Empirical evidence shows that in protesters’ First Amendment and Fourth Amendment cases, defendants’ qualified immunity claims are granted 60 percent of the time. Protesters also face nearly insurmountable obstacles in terms of holding municipalities liable for constitutional violations. The Supreme Court has recently limited protesters’ ability to bring First Amendment “retaliation” claims. Finally, the Court has all but sounded the death knell for First Amendment damages claims against federal officials. The chapter joins the chorus calling for qualified immunity reform. It also encourages states and localities to restrict officers’ ability to invoke qualified and other immunities, and to create causes of action against officials for violations of state constitutional law.

This chapter outlines and discusses different approaches to social ontology and locates Heidegger within a range of contemporary debates. I first discuss various accounts of the scope and method of social ontology by suggesting that social ontology has a restricted scope if it takes the social world to be a distinct domain among others and that, in contrast, has an unrestricted scope if it takes sociality to be an irreducible dimension of what there is. Discussing his general conception of fundamental ontology as well as the development of his early work, I then show that Heidegger’s social ontology is non-reductive and has an unrestricted scope. I then qualify this claim by arguing that Heidegger’s social ontological method can rightly be called transcendental in the sense that he argues that the irreducible social dimension of what there is depends not on empirical social formations but on transcendental relations to others.

The chapter lays a roadmap for the Handbook on Shareholder Engagement and Voting. It defines shareholder engagement as shareholders’ involvement with their investee companies, using their shareholder rights and powers, both formal and informal (such as voting rights), to influence corporate affairs inside and outside general meetings of shareholders. The chapter further discusses the Handbook’s overall methodological considerations, that is, a sophisticated functionalist approach, with a combined use of doctrinal and empirical methods. The chapter proceeds to elaborate on the framework of research questions that guide the Handbook’s chapter contributions on 19 jurisdictions around the globe. The framework comprises three groups of questions: general jurisdictional features, legal means of shareholder voting and engagement, as well as shareholder voting and engagement in practice. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the Handbook’s structure.

This chapter explores the preceding theory-based propositions, concerning the narrative roles of personal bioinformation, in light of people’s attitudes to and experiences of encountering three categories of bioinformation about themselves, as reported by empirical studies. These three categories are: information revealing conception using donor gametes, results from genetic tests indicating disease susceptibility, and findings from mental health applications of neuroimaging. These findings help illustrate the theory-based claims presented in Chapter 4 while also sense-testing and refining these claims with the benefit of insights into information subjects’ lived experiences. This chapter first outlines a sample of relevant findings, casting the net wider than those that explicitly frame subjects’ experiences in terms of identity. It then analyses these findings through the lens of embodied and relational narrative self-constitution, highlighting the range of positive and detrimental impacts that bioinformation can have on recipients’ identity narratives. These impacts include playing enabling, explanatory, practical, revisionary, and restrictive roles. The chapter concludes by identifying common and divergent themes across the three examples. This equips us better to understand diversity amongst recipients’ reactions to different information and also to extrapolate beyond specific observations relating to the three illustrative examples.

The starting point is the observation that some states are and have been unhappy with certain BITs that include ISDS provisions. Based on a dataset on renegotiated and terminated BITs, the authors ask if this is the case. The initial evidence indicates that states have not made a systematic effort over the years to recalibrate their BITs for the purpose of preserving more regulatory space. In fact, most renegotiations either leave ISDS provisions unchanged or render them more investor-friendly. Nevertheless, the authors find that this is beginning to change, as recent renegotiations are more likely to circumscribe ISDS in ways that preserve more state regulatory space.

This chapter provides an account of ways that experimental methods can be used to uncover and identify decision-making biases. Investment arbitration tribunals derive their legitimacy from different normative, sociological and political processes than standing courts. In great part, these tribunals rely on tacit norms of behaviour among arbitration professionals. Understanding what factors affect how arbitrators make decisions in these kinds of adjudicative settings is essential in assessing critiques concerning the quality or correctness of their decisions and especially their independence and impartiality. The authors describe a promising alternative empirical strategy that utilizes survey experiments conducted on arbitration professionals to test bias claims. It discusses also how researchers can design experimental vignettes to mimic specific aspects of the arbitration process that are difficult to observe or manipulate in the real world context.

The legitimacy of ISDS appears to depend in part on an expectation that it benefits smaller businesses, not just large multinationals and the super-wealthy. This chapter collects data on size and wealth of the foreign investors that have brought claims and received monetary awards due to ISDS. Categories for the size and wealth of foreign investors are compared to the size of damage awards, which helps determine that the primary beneficiaries in ISDS cases have been companies with annual revenue exceeding US$1 billion and individuals with net wealth in excess of US$100 million. The main finding is that the beneficiaries of ISDS-ordered financial transfers, in the aggregate, have overwhelmingly been wealthy individual investors and large companies – and especially extra-large companies. The authors also note that the awards gained by small companies are not so different from their legal costs.

Supporters of ISDS often justify the continued existence of ISDS on the basis that disputes are denationalized, thus keeping foreign investors out of domestic courts which may lack independence, be less efficient, or are biased against foreigners. This justification, unwittingly perhaps, strengthens a perception that foreign investors proceed directly to the international sphere. However, this chapter finds that many investors do avail themselves of domestic courts prior to an ISDS case and asks why this is the case. Looking at two states with transitional judiciaries and two states with well-functioning judiciaries, the author uncovers a rich data on the impressive scope of claims brought by foreign investors in the host states where they are investing; and Gáspár-Szilágyi concludes with some reflections on the role of domestic litigation in the legitimation of ISDS. (This abstract needs development)

The rapid growth in investor–state dispute settlement has sparked a decades-long legitimacy crisis in the international investment regime. The upshot is that concerns over foreign investor success in arbitration proceedings, from levels of compensation to lack of arbitral diversity and independence, has prompted wide-ranging reform efforts and even calls to abolish this treaty-based system. In the context of this historical and contemporary debate, the authors describe the importance of assessing empirically the claims and counter-claims about the regime’s absence of legitimacy. The chapter begins with an overview of the different types of legitimacy (normative, sociological, legitimation) and discusses how and to what extent empirical research can contribute to assessing legitimacy claims. The different chapters of the book, which is structured largely according to legitimacy categories, are then introduced and the piece concludes with some reflections on the overall themes and way forward for empirical research.