Blockchain technology has in recent years captured attention and funding based on its promise to build trust among multiple parties without the need for a trusted intermediary. Born out of government-funded research on game theoretic Byzantine consensus, it offers the prospect of a more...

Two legal instruments for promoting renewable energy production - renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”) and feed-in tariffs (“FITs”) - are in use across the globe. Many studies pit these policies against each other, treating them as either-or options. Some analyses suggest that FITs...

A 2005 Science article by Jensen and Murray is widely cited for the proposition that 20% of human genes are patented, and has led to a pervasive assumption that thousands of human genes cannot be used, studied or even 'looked at' by researchers and healthcare providers without infringing a gene...

Individual citizens have been found to be a major source of new product and service innovations of value both to themselves and to the economy at large. These citizen innovators operate in a little understood legal environment that we call the innovation wetlands. We show via a review of...

In the United States, renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”) dominate as the renewable energy policy tool of choice. Feed-in tariffs (“FITs”), common in Europe and other parts of the world, thus have come to be seen by many policymakers as a binary alternative -- to promote renewable...

As renewable energy support policies continue to evolve, assessing their effectiveness is increasingly important. Today, renewable portfolio standards (“RPS”) — mandates that jurisdictions produce a percentage of their electricity from renewable energy — are one of the two leading policy...

Feed-in tariffs are extremely popular. Ubiquitous in Europe and across the globe, studies often suggest that feed-in tariffs (“FITs”) tend to outperform renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”). The accepted logic is that this is because FITs offer certainty RPSs do not. Under a feed-in...

Why do states adopt renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”)? Many have suggested that RPSs mark a “race to the top,” where states adopt more and more stringent regimes in an effort to compete for clean energy jobs. This article challenges that presumption. It shows, by examining empirical...

Biotechnology has never demonstrated its benefits to society more than in 2021. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the CoVID-19 pandemic met a formidable opponent in mRNA vaccines developed and supplied by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. These vaccines are claimed in myriad – not Myriad – patents...