Collaborative business networks evaluation of technological tools for decision support making

Nowadays, companies are living great difficulties on managing their business due to constant and unpredictable economic market fluctuations. Recent changes in market trends (such as the constant demand for new products and services, mass customization and the drastic reduction of delivery time) lead companies to adopt strategies of creating partnerships with other companies as a way to respond effectively to such difficult economical times. Collaborative Networks’ concept born by the consequence of companies could no longer consider their internal business processes’ management as sufficient and tend to seek for a collaborative approach with other partners for their critical processes. Information technologies (ICT) assumed a major role acting as “enablers” of these kinds of networks, enhancing information sharing and business process integration. Several new trends concerning ICT architectures have been created to support collaborative networks requirements, but still doesn’t exist a common platform to reduce the needed integration effort on virtual organizations. This study aims to investigate the current technological solutions available in the market which enhances the management of companies’ business processes (specially, Collaborative Planning). Finally, the research work ends with the presentation of a conceptual model to answer to the constraints evaluated.

La noción de variedad esencialmente derivada en el marco de la UPOV y su incidencia en la decision 345 y la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual

Mediante una revisión de la normativa vigente sobre el derecho de obtentor en torno a las “variedades esencialmente derivadas” en nuestro país, determinaremos en que medida la aplicación práctica de este derecho, vulnera los intereses nacionales, especialmente en el ámbito de la biodiversidad y el derecho del agricultor, con el objeto de plantear una propuesta de reforma a la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual. Este trabajo está desarrollado de la siguiente manera: El capítulo I trata de temas generales como la importancia de la protección de las variedades vegetales, su evolución, una reseña histórica de la protección legal, una revisión de conceptos como variedad y obtentor y de los requisitos para la protección de este derecho y finalmente las similitudes y diferencias con el sistema de patentes. El capítulo II versa sobre las variedades esencialmente derivadas en el marco de la Unión Internacional para la Protección de las Obtenciones Vegetales, con el fin de entender como y porqué surgió este nuevo concepto. El capítulo III trata sobre la incidencia de las variedades esencialmente derivadas en la Decisión 345 y en la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, se analiza la situación expuesta con casos prácticos en el registro de variedades esencialmente derivadas y finalmente se elabora una propuesta de reforma a la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, con la que se busca encontrar un equilibro entre los obtentores y los intereses nacionales en este ámbito.

Mid-term Evaluation of the 2009-14 European Parliament: Legislative activity and decision-making dynamics. CEPS Special Report, 23 July 2012

This special report analyses legislative activity in the European Union and coalition formation in the European Parliament (EP) during the first half of the 7th legislative term, 2009-14. Co-decision is now the ordinary legislative procedure, not by name only: it was deployed on 90% of new proposals in 2010 and 86% in 2011, which suggests that the EP is now more influential than ever. There are differences in the degree of empowerment across committees, however. This report looks at the legislative workload of selected committees as an indicator of change in their influence, identifying which of them won and which lost out in terms of the quantity and type of legislation they tackle.