R&D Spending and Patenting in the Technology Hardware Sector in Nations With and Without Fair Use

This working paper uses two common indicators of innovation to see how the technology hardware sector compares in countries with and without fair use. It illustrates that research and development spending by firms in these industries has been higher in countries with fair use, controlling for other firm- and country-level factors. It then shows more patents have been granted to the technology sector in countries that have adopted fair use, relative to patents granted to firms in the same industries in other countries, controlling for other country-level factors

Korea’s 2011 Copyright Act Amendments and Innovation by Online Service Providers

In 2011, Korea amended its Copyright Act to comply with the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement’s intellectual property chapter, which included an obligation to enact a safe harbor for secondary copyright infringement in the online environment. Safe harbors protect internet firms from legal liability when their users post infringing content online, on the condition that the firms maintain a system to efficiently remove infringing content when notified of the infringement by rightholders. This paper tests whether the newly established safe harbors had an impact on innovation by Korean internet firms. I hypothesize that the amendments alleviated litigation risks faced by internet firms, incentivizing the development of new products and services. I test this by estimating difference-in-differences regressions on a panel of Korean internet and software producers between 2008 and 2015. Using R&D spending as a share of sales and patent metrics as measures of innovation inputs and outputs, respectively, I find that internet firms increased both R&D/sales and patent applications relative to the control group of software firms after the introduction of safe harbors. I find small changes in the direction of innovation as well: both internet and software firms expanded the set of technologies in which they applied for patents, though this was greater for the internet firms

R&D Spending and Patenting in the Technology Hardware Sector in Nations With and Without Fair Use

This working paper uses two common indicators of innovation to see how the technology hardware sector compares in countries with and without fair use. It illustrates that research and development spending by firms in these industries has been higher in countries with fair use, controlling for other firm- and country-level factors. It then shows more patents have been granted to the technology sector in countries that have adopted fair use, relative to patents granted to firms in the same industries in other countries, controlling for other country-level factors

The Impact of Copyright Exceptions for Researchers on Scholarly Output

High prices restrict access to academic journals and books that scholars rely upon to author new research. One possible solution is the expansion of copyright exceptions allowing unauthorized access to copyrighted works for researchers. I test the link between copyright exceptions for health and science researchers and their publishing output at the country-subject level. I find that scientists residing in countries that implement more robust research exceptions publish more papers and books in subsequent years. This relationship between copyright exceptions and publishing is stronger in lower-income countries, and stronger where there is stricter copyright protection of existing works

The U.S. Posture on Global Access to Medication & The Case for Change

The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of including intellectual property rights within the larger agenda of trade. While the marriage between trade and intellectual property was always uncomfortable, COVID-19 exposed the flaws, failures and the inadequacy of the trade agenda to harmonise intellectual property rights, particularly for patents in pharmaceuticals. Typically, the United States through its questionable United States Trade Representative (USTR) process exposed the vulnerabilities of the intellectual property systems of the rest of the world. COVID-19 exposed the manner in which the so-called ‘superior’ intellectual property regime of the US left the country with a weak health-care system. Testing, cost of medical care, lack of treatment, lack of quick access to doctors are all barriers that generally place the United States as having one of the worst health care systems compared to other developed economies. The onset of COVID-19 merely exacerbated the existing flaws to expose these vulnerabilities

The User Rights Database: Measuring the Impact of Copyright Balance

International and domestic copyright law reform around the world is increasingly focused on how copyright user rights should be expanded to promote maximum creativity and access to knowledge in the digital age. These efforts are guided by a relatively rich theoretical literature. However, few empirical studies explore the social and economic impact of expanding user rights in the digital era. One reason for this gap has been the absence of a tool measuring the key independent variable – changes in copyright user rights over time and between countries. We developed such a tool, which we call the “User Rights Database.” This paper describes the methodology used to create the Database and the results of empirical tests using it. We find that all of the countries in our study are trending toward more open copyright user rights over time, but the wealthy countries in our sample are about thirty years ahead of developing countries on this measure. We find evidence of benefits that more open copyright user rights generate, including the development of high technology industries and scholarly publication. We do not find evidence that opening user rights causes harm to revenue of copyright intensive industries like publishing and entertainment

An Economic Justification for Open Access to Essential Medicine Patents in Developing Countries

This paper offers an economic rationale for compulsory licensing of needed medicines in developing countries. The patent system is based on a trade-off between the “deadweight losses” caused by market power and the incentive to innovate created by increased profits from monopoly pricing during the period of the patent. However, markets for essential medicines under patent in developing countries with high income inequality are characterized by highly convex demand curves, producing large deadweight losses relative to potential profits when monopoly firms exercise profit-maximizing pricing strategies. As a result, these markets are systematically ill-suited to exclusive marketing rights, a problem which can be corrected through compulsory licensing. Open licenses that permit any qualified firm to supply the market on the same terms, such as may be available under licenses of right or essential facility legal standards, can be used to mitigate the negative effects of government-granted patents, thereby increasing overall social welfare

How to be SSB-free: Assessing the attitudes and readiness for a sugar sweetened beverage-free healthcare center in the Bronx, NY

In recent years, communities and institutions have sought new interventions intended to reduce sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among children. Among these interventions are “SSB-free zones,” where such beverages are not permitted to be consumed on the premises. Insufficient knowledge still exists, however, about the readiness for such restrictive SSB policies within health care institutions. Understanding attitudes toward SSB consumption among adults is necessary to guide an institution-wide policy, where staff and patients serve as role models for parents and their children. We conducted focus groups with health center patients and staff to determine perceptions surrounding health and SSB consumption and to better understand the support and readiness (or lack thereof) for an SSB-free zone intervention prior to its implementation. We found that contextual practices present challenges to breaking personal consumption habits, even if beverages are banned from the worksite. Nevertheless, participants expressed support for SSB-free zones, and recommended more education about the harmful effects of soda and energy drink consumption to help improve acceptability for the policy. We conclude that policies restricting onsite SSB consumption may be more effective when combined with educational information and expressions of understanding that this specific behavior change can be difficult

Research Exceptions in Comparative Copyright

This Article categorizes the world’s copyright laws according to the degree to which they provide exceptions to copyright exclusivity for research uses. We classify countries based on the degree to which they have a research exception in their law that is sufficiently open to be able to permit reproduction and communications of copyrighted work needed for academic (i.e. non-commercial) text and data mining (TDM) research. We show that nearly every copyright law has at least one exception that promotes uses for research purposes. We find six different approaches to the provision of research exceptions that implicate application to TDM. Notably, not all recent exceptions passed specifically to enable TDM receive the most open ranking in our typology. And a significant number of countries, marked red in our maps, do not provide a research exception or limit uses only to quotations. This report may be useful in helping countries find models for domestic copyright reform as well for consideration of guidelines or norms for harmonization between countries