The introduction of the book is dedicated to the discussion of the concept and doctrinal elements (prerequisites) of upcycling, its role in the legal system, as well as its interdisciplinary nature. We argue that upcycling is not a single dimensional activity to be approached solely from the perspective of exclusive IP rights. It represents a new philosophy for environment-conscious producers and consumers, promising the construction of new bottom-up approaches to decrease the negative consequences of human activities on earth. With the growing need for green transition, also addressed by legislators, upcycling can work as a case study for decision-makers from the domestic to the international level to reimagine IP policies to support green transitions at micro level by allowing individual upcyclers the reuse of IP-affected goods; at mezo level by convincing investors and industry-level organizations to renew economic models and invest in transformative reuses; and at macro level by allowing legislation to incentivize innovative activities to minimize waste and maximize the benefits of consumables for their full life-cycle.

This chapter establishes the terminology and notation necessary for the study of signed graphs and introduces their two fundamental concepts, balance and switching equivalence. It provides formal definitions of the key matrices associated with signed graphs, including the adjacency matrix, Laplacian matrix, and net Laplacian matrix, and discusses their basic properties in detail. The chapter also examines foundational results concerning the characteristic polynomials and eigenvalues of these matrices, highlighting their role in analysing the structural and spectral properties of signed graphs. In addition, the standard structural balance criteria are extended and generalized through spectral criteria, which can be computed efficiently in polynomial time, providing a practical framework for assessing balance in larger and more complex networks.

This chapter examines the dynamics of European Union (EU) media regulation created in response to digital communication challenges that affect media freedom and pluralism. In the context of the trend of outsourcing digital regulation to global private actors, the chapter focuses on the redistribution of media regulation competencies between Member States and the EU as an implication of the European Media Freedom Act. Particular attention is placed on the problems of enforcement and compliance; discrepancies in how supranational regulations are interpreted, together with differences in resources available to national regulators, could prevent the intended outcomes. In conclusion, the chapter discusses the democratic legitimacy of EU media regulation, pointing to the widening gap between public deliberations and regulatory decisions in the transnational sphere.

In this chapter, we elaborate on the fundamental importance of Carleson measures in complex analysis on the unit disk, concerning here interpolation sequences and embedding theorems. It is convenient to first recall a few classical facts.