Sustainable development not only refers to the relationship between the economy and the environment, but it also has a social dimension. This article reviews the original acts and basic documents concerning EU’s sustainable development strategy, from the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to the latest...

We undertake the first examination of price discovery within the European markets for coal, natural gas and crude oil. Short-run return dynamics are analyzed using a regression approach similar to Fleming, Ostdiek and Whaley (1996), while the permanent contribution of securities to long-run...

This chapter investigates the extent to which the European Union (EU)1 has incorporated climate change into its development cooperation policy. It describes the EU’s development cooperation policy, its evolution and its main principles (see Section 6.2), and focuses on the process of...

On July 5 2000 the European Commission proposed the creation of a Community patent to give inventors the option of obtaining a single patent legally valid throughout the European Union. The Lisbon European Council cited the creation of a Community patent as an essential part of Europe's efforts...

For the last 25 years we have seen a flood of new developments and new applications in the field of biotechnology and genetic engineering. The question facing researchers, patent practitioners, patent authorities, courts and legislators is whether or not, and if yes, to which extent, protection...

In their animated book 'The Patent Crisis and How the Courts can Solve It', Dan Burk and Mark Lemley give an account of their quest into the judicial treatment of patents in different industry sectors. They present an in-depth commentary on industry specific differences in the patent system from...

The present report is based on an independent, policy-oriented investigation of the current European patent system. The central premise of the report is that the patent system has so far been a positive factor in promoting innovation and the diffusion of knowledge, and thus that the system is...

The present paper explores the multi-layered relationship between plant patents, the right to food and competition law. The present contribution takes the view that the growing tendency to appropriate agricultural crops through intellectual property (IP) – thereby making a pivotal shift from...

Intellectual property rights have, from their inception, been shaped by international treaties. National legislators have had to look at the international scene to gain some insight into the prevailing intellectual property standards. This trend was less prominent in the field of patent law and...

Oil prices have fluctuated considerably in the last few years, with major effects on the economy. This paper describes some of the mechanisms by which these fluctuations produce changes in the long-run growth of the economy. In particular, it analyses the effect on productivity, capital stock...