Cultivating the Genetic Commons: Imperfect Patent Protection and the Network Model of Innovation

This Article enters this debate and argues the following position. Assuming that antitrust authorities persist in certain strategies to impede patent consolidation, the recent introduction of patent rights for certain biotechnological innovations is likely to encourage private investment in the genetic commons and reduce (or, at least, not enhance) the accessibility costs that could stunt technological advance. To reach this conclusion, this Article shows that the two leading theories of patent protection, the incentive theory7 and the prospect theory,8 do not explain private industry\u27s willingness to sink significant investment capital into highly uncertain biopharmaceutical projects. These theories offer insufficient explanations because patent protection for biopharmaceutical innovations is substantially incomplete and generally covers only a small portion of a particular innovation\u27s technological yield. Both the incentive and prospect theories falsely predict that the appropriability gap would drive away private investors from biotechnology projects that appear to generate a large stream of unprotected, or giveaway, benefits. In contrast, this Article argues that this imperfect form of patent protection attracts private investment in uncertain research projects by reducing two information asymmetries that impede interfirm ventures capable of efficiently spreading the high risk of biopharmaceutical product development. At the same time, the imperfect character of patent protection reduces (or, at least, does not enhance) accessibility costs by encouraging individual firms to capture the unprotected portion of an innovation project\u27s expected yield by entering into interfirm research, marketing, or production alliances

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and its environmental impact as a low carbon energy source

[Abstract]: A life cycle assessment is an environmental management methodology documented by the International Standards Organization (ISO2006) for researching the impact a product has on the environment. Liquefied natural gas is a product contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. These emissions can be minimized by analysis of its source and adopting appropriate process technology throughout the product lifecycle. Natural gas for many years was regarded as a volatile waste product within the oil and coal industries, and was subsequently vented into the atmosphere resulting in pollution. Natural gas is now accepted as a source of low carbon energy assisting the transition from heavy fuels to renewable energy. Liquefying the natural gas has proved to be an economic method for transporting this energy to the market place where pipeline infrastructure is unavailable. Australia has large resources of natural gas in conventional off-shore wells and underground coal-seams. Demand for energy security has positioned Australia to capitalize on its natural resources and supply low carbon energy to fuel economic growth in Asia. The production of liquefied natural gas in Australia is forecast to grow above one hundred million tons per annum within the next five years, becoming the world’s second largest supplier behind Qatar. Natural gas has a calorific value of approximately 40 MJ/m3, with greater than eighty five percent Methane content. Liquefied natural gas is produced by cooling natural gas to its boiling point of minus 161°C, becoming 1/600th its original volume. It is stored in insulated tanks at normal atmospheric pressure before being loaded on-board ships and transported to market. Ships used to transport liquefied natural gas range in size between 135,000m³ and 265,000m³. Once delivered to market, liquefied natural gas is used for cryogenic storage and re-gasified for domestic gas supply, power generation and industrial manufacturing. This study assesses the environmental impact of liquefied natural gas during liquefaction, shipping and re-gasification using a life cycle assessment approach. Greenhouse gas emissions are quantified in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and recommendations are made for process and technology improvements. Liquefaction of natural gas produces emissions during the removal of carbon dioxide from inflow gas, fuel used in gas turbines compressors and fuel used by power generation turbines. Shipping liquefied natural gas generates emissions from fuel used by the ships engines and re-gasification generates emissions from fuel used to operate pumps and power turbines. A thirty eight percent improvement in efficiency has been identified in the lifecycle of liquefied natural gas from Australia compared to global production, resulting in only six and a half grams of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per mega Joule of energy delivered to Asian markets

Environmental impact analysis : the identification of secondary impacts

Includes bibliographical references.The need for a preliminary environmental impact analysis approach, able to identify secondary impacts, has been revealed by a broad literary review. Therefore, the component interaction technique has been developed which is able to structure a preliminary investigation of secondary impacts. The technique is based on a component interaction matrix. The environment is modelled as a list of environmental components, and direct dependencies between these components are then recorded. Computerized matrix powering procedures are able to structure the data to facilitate the investigation of the secondary impact potential in the system. By virtue of its construction, the technique ensures that a preliminary analysis of impact is based on a comprehensive and structured consideration of the environment. The procedure can also be used to substantiate and control the subjective content of an impact study. These two attributes of the technique support its application in conjunction with other methods of impact analysis. Various extensions to the technique have also been considered

Antitrust Overreach: Undoing Cooperative Standardization in the Digital Economy

Information technology markets in general and wireless communications markets, in particular, rely on standardization mechanisms to develop interoperable devices for data processing, storage, and transmission. From 2G through the emergent 5G standard, wireless communications markets have largely achieved standardization through cooperative multi-firm arrangements that likely outperform the historically dominant alternatives of government monopoly, which is subject to informational deficits and regulatory capture, and private monopoly, which suffers from pricing and other distortions inherent to protected market positions. This cooperative process has successfully relied on three key legal elements: reasonably secure patents, quasi-contractual licensing commitments supplemented by reputation effects, and targeted application of antitrust safeguards against collusion risk. Over approximately the past decade, antitrust agencies and courts in the U.S., Europe and Asia have taken actions that threaten this legal infrastructure by limiting patentees’ ability to seek injunctive relief, adopting rigid understandings of “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” licensing principles, and addressing collusion risk among licensors-innovators while overlooking (and even exacerbating) collusion risk among licensees-implementers. These judicial and regulatory interventions in IP licensing markets shift value from firms and economies that specialize in generating innovations to firms and economies that specialize in integrating innovations into end-user products. These entity-level and country-level redistributive effects are illustrated by lobbying activities in the wireless communications markets and antitrust actions against IP licensors in jurisdictions that have substantial net IP deficits and are principally populated by IP licensees. Current antitrust policy promotes producers’ narrow interests in lower input costs while ignoring the broader public interest in preserving the cooperative standardization structures that have supported innovation and commercialization in the digital economy

Effects of Light Quality and Light Quantity on the Growth Kinetics of a Louisiana Native Microalgal/Cyanobacterial Co-culture

One of the most important factors controlling the growth of microalgae is light. Light quality and light quantity have a dramatic effect on the production of biomass, lipids and pigments of microalgae. In this research, a native Louisiana co-culture containing Chlorella vulgaris (microalgae) and Leptolyngbya sp (cyanobacteria) was studied to determine the effects of various wavelength distributions and irradiance levels on growth kinetics. Growth rates, biomass levels, lipid contents and chlorophyll-a production was examined in batch cultures to determine which color light was optimum for cultivation. At 80 µmol/m^2-sec the species shifted from microalgae dominant to cyanobacteria dominant. The impact of four different light colors (blue, green, red and white) on the growth at 400 µmol/m^2-sec revealed that red light produced the highest growth rate (0.41 1/d) and final biomass concentration (913 mg/L). Red light was chosen as the optimum wavelength at 400 µmol/m^2-sec. When red light was compared to white light at higher light intensities red light produced the highest growth rate (0.47 1/d). Red light had the highest photosynthetic efficiency (1.29 %), while white light had the highest chlorophyll-a production (1874 µg/L) and the highest biomass (1207 mg/L). Overall, red light was determined to be the optimum wavelength to grow this co-culture because of the higher growth rates and photosynthetic efficiency. This co-culture was also grown in a continuous flow hydraulically integrated serial turbidostat algal reactor (HISTAR) system. This study showed that different dilution rates can affect the final harvested biomass weight. Also, at high biomass concentrations, light penetration is reduced enough for cyanobacteria filaments to form, which will hinder the growth of the microalgae

The “License as Tax” Fallacy

Intellectual property licenses are commonly portrayed as a “tax” that limits access to technology assets, which in turn stunts innovation by intermediate users and inflates prices for end-users. Renewed skepticism toward IP licensing, and associated judicial and regulatory interventions that apply per se-like liability rules under patent and antitrust law to IP licensing, overlook the fact that IP licenses typically play a “positive-sum” enabling function, rather than a “zero-sum” exclusionary function, by mitigating expropriation risks that would otherwise frustrate transactions between the holders of complementary specialized IP and non-IP assets. As illustrated by paradigm examples of licensing and other IP-dependent arrangements in content and technology markets, these transactional structures facilitate value-creating exchanges of knowledge assets, promote the division of labor among innovation and production specialists, and lower entry costs for firms that have strong innovation capacities but weak production and distribution capacities. An analytical framework that overlooks the enabling function of IP licensing is prone to recommend “false positive” policy actions that undermine the formation of markets in IP assets and, more generally, induce organizational distortions and reduce competitive intensity by disadvantaging R&D-specialist entities that rely on licensing-based monetization mechanisms while favoring integrated firms that maintain end-to-end commercialization structures

The Case for Noncompetes

Scholars and other commentators widely assert that enforcement of contractual and other limitations on labor mobility deters innovation. Based on this view, federal and state legislators have taken, and continue to consider, actions to limit the enforcement of covenants not to compete in employment agreements. These actions would discard the centuries-old reasonableness standard that governs the enforcement of these provisions, often termed “noncompetes,” in all but four states (notably, California). We argue that this zero-enforcement position lacks a sound basis in theory or empirics. As a matter of theory, it overlooks the complex effects of contractual limitations on labor mobility in innovation markets. While it is frequently asserted that noncompetes may impede knowledge spillovers that foster innovation, it is frequently overlooked that noncompetes may encourage firms to invest in cultivating intellectual and human capital. As a matter of empirics, we show that two commonly referenced bodies of evidence fail to support zero enforcement. First, we revisit the conventional account of the rise of Silicon Valley and the purported fall of the Boston area as innovation centers, showing that this divergence cannot suitably be explained by differences in state law regarding noncompetes. Second, we show that widely cited empirical studies fail to support a causal relationship between non-competes, reduced labor mobility, and reduced innovation. Given these theoretical and empirical complexities, we propose an error-cost approach that provides an economic rationale for the common law’s reasonableness approach toward contractual constraints on the circulation of human capital