This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 “inventions” contributed by major multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to...

Our exploratory empirical study, based on a series of in-depth interviews and a survey of firms, searches for answers on a number of questions that deal with the role of formal contracts and intellectual property rights in the context of open innovation. We find that firms active in open...

In most modern economies scientific and technological research activities are conducted in two distinct organizational modes commercially oriented RD based upon proprietary information, and noncommercial open science. When taken together and kept in proper balance, these form a complementary...

Two court decisions in the 1990s are widely viewed as having opened the door to a flood of business method and financial patents at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and to have also impacted other patent offices around the world. A number of scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued...

Global climate change mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international technology transfer in...

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights, 1995, has introduced several mandatory changes to patent protection on pharmaceuticals that can affect health care and delivery in developing countries. The potential detrimental impacts of such IPR protection raise three...