Negative-Emission Technologies and Patent Rights after COVID-19

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 225-265
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Sarnoff

Abstract Governmental and particularly private funding has recently and dramatically expanded for both beccs and dac technologies. This funding and the associated research, development, and deployment efforts will generate intellectual property rights, particularly patent rights in nets. As with access to medicines, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted concerns that patent rights may incentivize RD&D at the cost of affordable access to the relevant technologies. Further, access may be restricted to particular countries based on sovereignty concerns to seek preferential supply agreements through up-front funding. As a result, nations will likely turn to controversial ex-post measures, such as compulsory licensing, to assure access and to control prices of the needed technologies. The same concerns with patent rights likely will affect RD&D of nets. Although international ex-ante measures exist (such as patent pools) which would help to minimize these concerns, such measures may not induce the requisite voluntary contributions, or may fail to materialize due to political disagreements. Focusing on both US law and international developments, this article proposes various ex-ante measures that can be adopted by national governments and private funders to minimize the likely forthcoming worldwide conflicts that will arise over balancing innovation incentives for, and affordable access to, patented nets.

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Ann Wolverton ◽  
Ann E. Ferris ◽  
Nathalie B. Simon

This paper compares the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ex ante compliance cost estimates for the 2004 Automobile and Light-Duty Truck Surface Coating National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants to ex post evidence on the actual costs of compliance based on ex post cost data gathered from a subset of the industry via pilot survey and follow-up interviews. Unlike many prior retrospective studies on the cost of regulatory compliance, we use this newly gathered information to identify the key drivers of any differences between the ex ante and ex post estimates. We find that the U.S. EPA overestimated the cost of compliance for the plants in our sample and that overestimation was driven primarily by differences in the method of compliance rather than differences in the per-unit cost associated with a given compliance approach. In particular, the U.S. EPA expected facilities to install pollution abatement control technologies in their paint shops to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants, but instead these plants complied by reformulating coatings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-88
Author(s):  
David Shore

Patent rights are recognized as a property asset with an attendant right to exclude. However, recent policy developments highlight that the right to exclude is not inviolable. This paper explores two rapidly evolving exceptions to patent exclusivity, both of which take the form of compulsory licenses. First, under the international Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”), national governments can compel patent owners to out-license technology in service of greater good. These egalitarian compulsory licenses improve access to technology but undermine patent value. Second, compulsory licenses are increasingly relied upon as an equitable remedy in U.S. patent litigation. Typically referred to as “ongoing royalties,” these court-mandated compulsory licenses are a modern alternative to injunctions against adjudged infringers. TRIPS compulsory licenses and ongoing royalties arise under independent legal frameworks, but necessarily invoke parallel economic considerations. While the wisdom of each has been discussed at length by others, this paper explores principles of royalty determination employed in each context. Considering both frameworks, an analysis of where each succeeds and fails is provided, together with an exploration of optimized royalty frameworks.


2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (No. 10) ◽  
pp. 500-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Papoušek

By the means of Land Consolidation is understood, in accord with law No. 139/2002 Coll., spending of funds on land consolidations and land offices, provided the accessibility of grounds in public interest. Land consolidations also ensure the conditions for improvement of the ecosystem, protection and reclamation of land resources, waterway management and the increase of the ecological stability of landscape. All mentioned measures are collectively called the Common Measures, rural roads being one of the most significant of these measures as far as the ground accessibility is concerned. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Central Land Office (MZe, ÚPÚ) statistics, for instance in 2008, over 707.4 million CZK was spent on the common measures projects from the public funds. Of this sum, 82 per cent was spent on financing of the land accessibility projects – rural roads and objects on them. The Cost & Benefit Analysis (CBA) method was applied. The analysis explains step by step what benefits the investment projects bring and to whom, as well as what and from whom it takes something away. Thus defined effects and impacts are aggregated, converted into financial flows and included in the calculation of criteria indicators. These calculations enable to make decision whether the concerned project is in its consequences generally contributive. There is a difficulty in the method – it is applied ex-ante, which usually leads to the exaggerated input parameters, which may be significantly affected by a number of variable effects (time factor, socio-economic impacts, inflation rate, etc.). The ex-post application of the method cannot be objectively used due to the absence of the statistically processed input data for the analysis. Such data must be collected during the operational period of the realized investments. This is caused by the fact that these analyses consider lifetime of these investments in terms of 25–30 years. The ÚPÚ statistics, however, say that the operational period of most of realized common measures has not reached one half of their lifetime yet. The ex-ante analysis enables to evaluate the possible difficulty and the general benefit of projects, including their impact on the broad spectrum of subjects.  


10.1068/c0063 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Chisholm

When the structure of local government in Great Britain was reorganised during the 1990s, considerable emphasis was placed by the government on the financial savings which would accrue to offset the costs incurred in making the changes. Previous work examined these expectations and found clear evidence that the ex ante estimates of transition costs given to the Westminster parliament were serious underestimates, and that the expected savings had not, at that time, materialised. This work was done at a time when it was known that some of the official data on transition costs would not be complete until after the close of the 2000/01 financial year. The author's primary purpose is to place on record what may be regarded as the final estimates of the transition costs in England, Scotland, and Wales. In addition, comparisons between the ex ante estimates of the costs of structural change and the ex post evidence concerning actual costs are updated. The discrepancy between these is such as to confirm the need for some form of independent scrutiny of new legislation at the time when it is being considered in parliament, to ensure that decisions are taken in the light of realistic assessments of the costs and benefits of proposed enactments.


Author(s):  
Weiran Shen ◽  
Zihe Wang ◽  
Song Zuo

Motivated by online ad auctions, we consider a repeated auction between one seller and many buyers, where each buyer only has an estimation of her value in each period until she actually receives the item in that period. The seller is allowed to conduct a dynamic auction but must guarantee ex-post individual rationality. In this paper, we use a structure that we call credit accounts to enable a general reduction from any incentive compatible and ex-ante individual rational dynamic auction to an approximate incentive compatible and ex-post individually rational dynamic auction with credit accounts. Our reduction obtains stronger individual rationality guarantees at the cost of weaker incentive compatibility. Surprisingly, our reduction works without any common knowledge assumption. Finally, as a complement to our reduction, we prove that there is no non-trivial auction that is exactly incentive compatible and ex-post individually rational under this setting.


2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 817-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter O. Christensen ◽  
Leonidas E. de la Rosa ◽  
Gerald A. Feltham

ABSTRACT: Recent articles have demonstrated that increased public disclosure can decrease firms’ cost of capital. The focus has been on the impact of information on the cost of capital subsequent to the release of the information (the ex post cost of capital). We show that the reduction in the ex post cost of capital is offset by an equal increase in the cost of capital for the period leading up to the release of the information (the preposterior cost of capital). Thus, within the class of models framing the recent discussion, there is no impact on the ex ante cost of capital covering the full time span of the firm. The extent to which information is made publicly or privately available affects the timing of the resolution of uncertainty and when the information is reflected in equilibrium prices, but there is no impact on initial equilibrium prices. Within a noisy rational expectations equilibrium, rational investors may actually benefit from a higher ex post cost of capital.


Author(s):  
Young-Kwan Kwon ◽  
Yeonbae Kim ◽  
Tai-Yoo Kim ◽  
Yongil Song

Recently Patent Pooling has a fast growing interest as a good alternative means to decrease transaction costs between IPRs owners and promote technology commercialization and diffusion. In this paper we attempt to shed light on the effects of patent pooling on the ex-ante innovation investment or incentive using the game theoretical economic model. We generalize the model by including many vertical integrated firms, research laboratories, and specialized manufacturing firms. Main results of this paper are: 1) Patent Pools can affect on the innovation incentives of vertically integrated firms(I-firms) and of research laboratories(R-firms) differently, and the effect depends on the number of I-firms owning essential  patents and the number of specially manufacturing firms(M-firms). But in the presence of many I-firms owning essential patents, the instruction of patent pooling increases  I-firms’ ex-ante innovation incentive or investments with independence of M-firms. 2) There is strategic complementary relationship between innovation investments of I-firms and those of R-firms, so I-firms’ increased ex-ante innovation investments make R-firms’ ex-ante innovation investments increasing. 3) In the case of R-firms maximizing private profit, the best aspect is to license independently their patent technology when I-firms make up patent pools. But this aspect is not desirable for I-firms because I-firms’ gross profit is smaller than that of I-firms which license their patent technologies independently. However, we show that in the cases of many I-firms owning essential patent technologies, patent pools including only I-firms(IP) or all upstream firms(CP) can affect asymmetrically on the I-firms’ or R-firms’ innovation investments. Nonetheless, any types of patent pools make the innovation investments of I-firms and R-firms higher than those of all firms which license independently. In summary, nowadays under general aspects that production of final goods requires many complex technologies and that many I-firms and R-firms attend R&D for essential technologies, competition authorities’ deregulation for patent pooling or government policy supporting the patent pooling can promote upstream firms’ innovation incentives or investments and compulsory licensing about R-firms is not necessary for enhancing upstream firms’ innovation investments or incentives..


Medicne pravo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
O. Y. KASHYNTSEVA ◽  
◽  
M. M. TROFYMENKO ◽  

The article concerns the comparative legal analysis of managed entryagreements (MEAs), compulsory licenses on inventions and the use of pat-ented inventions without the permission of an owner of the patent rights in order to ensure the health of the population and in emergency circum-stances. The authors determine the essential conditions and special fea-tures of such agreements. In article the authors present the analysis of theinternational legal regulation of the market of patent rights in the field ofpharmacy. Managed entry agreements are the effective legal instrumentfor ensuring access to innovative medicines, which are still in the post-clin-ical stage, while the compulsory licensing and the government use in thepublic interests could expand access to generic versions of medicines. All ofmentioned legal measures are available in Ukrainian legislation, but noneof them has been used yet. Key words: managed entry agreements, compulsory licenses, govern-ment use, intellectual property, human rights, access to medicines.


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