Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Although patents are the prototypical type of protection that most people consider applicable to protecting drugs, patents are just the most-established and well-known method available to protect drugs from competition. However, there are other types of mechanisms in regulatory laws that provide...

This paper discusses how clerical errors made in documents relating to patents should be dealt with. It takes as its cue a recent case that overturned the Canadian Patent Office’s refusal to correct an error – a patent agent’s supply of the wrong serial number of a patent when remitting...

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, patentees created many novel and complex transactions to commercialize their property: they maximized their profits through sophisticated agreements that imposed restrictions on manufacturing, sales, and other uses of their inventions. When these...

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions and consequent climate changes and social responses will depend substantially upon the rapid development and widespread dissemination of a wide variety of new mitigation and adaptation technologies. The international approach adopted by the UN Framework...

In determining whether a judge or jury should decide particular issues in patent cases, the Federal Circuit has placed too much emphasis on reaching outcomes perceived to be beneficial from a policy perspective and too little emphasis on performing analyses that are consistent with Supreme Court...

Patent thickets may inefficient retard cumulative innovation. This paper explores two alternative mechanisms that may be used to weed out patent thickets. Both mechanisms are intended to reduce the number of patents in our society. The first mechanism we discuss is price based regulation of...

Planet earth is host to a dazzling variety of living organisms. This diversity of life, or – biodiversity, is vital to the survival and prosperity of humanity, supplying such vital amenities as food, clothing, shelter, natural biochemicals useful in medicine, industry, and agriculture, and...

The patent law regimes of the United States and Europe are ambiguous regarding whether or not the subject matter of patents ought to be restricted to that of technology. This ambiguity is exacerbated by the difficulties faced by lawmakers in defining technology; and it confounds contemporary...

This article argues that effectiveness and legitimacy are two inseparable issues for the success of economic governance systems. Moving beyond the conventional market failure and state failure approaches, the article develops the notion of network governance success, a notion that looks at the...