Academic Opinion of Economic Scholars on Champsaur Commission’s Paper

This paper is the joint position taken by nine academics on the French debate introduced by the “Rapport de la commission présidée par Paul Champsaur sur l’organisation du marché de l’électricité” on April 2009. In order to reform the French reform, the Champsaur commission has made three main recommendations: (i) withdrawing the current retail administered tariff for business (ii) maintaining retail administered tariffs for households (iii) introducing a wholesale administered tariff on electricity from nuclear power generation. This rapport invites discussions on the French market design. Our academic joint position challenges these propositions. The authors welcome to the fact the commission proposes to abandon the tariff for business as very complex to implement (and hence costly) and freezes competition. However, authors have reservations about the other two recommendations. They are mainly based on the classical two-prong economic test to support a new regulation: (i) assessing its costs and benefits to ensure the latter offsets the former; (ii) comparing the recommended regulation with alternative instruments to verify that it is the best choice.Champsaur commission,French Electricity market reform,Nuclear industry reform,Market design,redistribution of scarcity rents

Pharmaceutical Regulation and Intellectual Property: the Third Side of the Triangle

This paper seeks to determine the interactions between industry-specific regulation law and patent law in the case of the pharmaceutical industry. It thus attempts to close the third side of the triangle formed by the vertices of antitrust, regulation and intellectual property. For a lack of academic references on the subject , this paper is obviously highly exploratory, raising more questions than it answers. The first section of the chapter contains an overview of the intersection between the three areas of law and a discussion of the differences and similarities between regulation and intellectual property law. The second section studies the previously neglected side of the triangle in the case of the pharmaceutical industry. The third section concludes with considerations on the application of antitrust law in the regulated, R&D-intensive pharmaceuticals industry.

Electricity Internal Market in the European Union: What to do next?

Like in the US, the EU “internal electricity market” remains unfinished and its construction can stall, fracturing into “national blocks” separated by permanent “border effects”. This is exactly what this paper seeks to avoid in the expected life of the current European Commission (2005-2009). It identifies the critical factors: national and EU market designs, industry structure and competition policy, deeper regional cooperation between TSOs and Regulators. It suggests 8 priority actions and 12 secondary improvements to sustain the dynamics of the construction of an EU set of open r egional markets with limited “border effects”, and explains the rationale for these recommendations

Technology standards, patents and antitrust

From the perspective of antitrust authorities, the multiplication of patents embodied in technology standards is a source of concerns. Certainly it is necessary and efficient that patents owners derive a revenue from the use of the standard. Yet by their function - ensuring compatibility between different products by promoting a common technology platform in a particular industry - standards generate potential for market power far beyond the legal protection conferred by patents. Patent holders may thus be tempted to leverage their position to make illegal profits. Such concerns arise in two different cases that have fueled antitrust debates and economic research during the last decade. On the one hand, patent owners may be tempted to collude by coordinating their licensing policies. The difficulty here is that some coordination between them within a patent pool may actually be pro-competitive. After a brief introduction, we explain in the first part why, and on what conditions, patent pools should be accepted by antitrust authorities. On the other hand, patent owners may be tempted to manipulate the standard setting process by waiting for the wide adoption of the standard before charging excessive royalties to its users. We present this hold-up problem in the second part, and show how appropriate rules for standard setting processes can help mitigate it.Antitrust, Hold-up, Innovation, Licensing, Patent, Patent Pool, Royalty, Standard

Copyright versus Patents: the Open Source Software Legal Battle

Open Source Software is often viewed as an anti-intellectual property regime. By contrast, we argue how IP law is at the heart of open source model since licenses that organize the innovation and business relationships between developers, distributors and end-users are based on copyright law. The proliferation of software patents can, however be seen as a threat for the development and deployment of open source software. We present the nature of the threat and review a series of initiatives undertaken by the open source community to address them effectively. These initiatives, such as the redesign of licenses and the creation of patent commons, are a testiment to a genuinely creative use of IP law by the open source community, not its undermining.Open Source Software; Patent; Hold-Up; Copyright; Copyleft; Intellectual Property

Early commitments help patent pool formation

This paper explores in what circumstances patent owners can be expected to join unilaterally a patent pool. We develop a simple model in which owners of patents reading on a standard grant licences to competing manufacturers. Manufacturers must sink a fixed cost to enter the market for standard compliant products, and are thus exposed to a hold up when royalties are set after their entry. We show that the formation of non-cooperative patent pools nearly always fails if it takes place once manufacturers have incurred fixed costs - as is usually the case. By contrast, allowing the formation of patent pools ex ante facilitates the emergence of stable non-cooperative patent pools. Such ex ante pools yield lower prices and higher licensing profits than ex post patent pools would. We discuss the policy implications of these results concerning the credibilty of licensing commitments required by standard setting bodies.

Pharmaceutical Regulation and Intellectual Property: the Third Side of the Triangle

CERNA WORKING PAPER SERIES 2009-01This paper seeks to determine the interactions between industry-specific regulation law and patent law in the case of the pharmaceutical industry. It thus attempts to close the third side of the triangle formed by the vertices of antitrust, regulation and intellectual property. For a lack of academic references on the subject , this paper is obviously highly exploratory, raising more questions than it answers. The first section of the chapter contains an overview of the intersection between the three areas of law and a discussion of the differences and similarities between regulation and intellectual property law. The second section studies the previously neglected side of the triangle in the case of the pharmaceutical industry. The third section concludes with considerations on the application of antitrust law in the regulated, R&D-intensive pharmaceuticals industry

Le risque d'accident nucléaire majeur : calcul et perception des probabilités

Avant la fusion de coeur des réacteurs 1, 2 et 3 de Fukushima Daiichi, huit accidents majeurs affectant des centrales nucléaires s'étaient déjà produits dans le monde. Ce chiffre est élevé par rapport à celui escompté par les experts. Les observations ne semblent pas coller avec les résultats des modèles probabilistes d'accidents nucléaires élaborés depuis les années 1970. Paradoxalement, le nombre d'accidents majeurs est plus proche du risque perçu par les citoyens. Chacun d'entre nous a en effet tendance à surévaluer le risque lorsqu'il concerne des événements rares et effroyables. Comment comprendre les écarts et réconcilier le monde de l'observation, la probabilité objective des accidents et l'évaluation subjective des risques ? Les experts ont-ils pêché par optimisme ? L'opinion publique est-elle irrationnelle sur le sujet du danger nucléaire ? Comment mesurer le risque et sa perception

Publicité en ligne : Google double clique et gagne

International audienceL'acquisition de DoubleClick par Google, une entreprise technologique de publicité en ligne, a été autorisée sans conditions par la Commission des Communautés européennes et par la Commission fédérale pour le commerce des Etats-Unis. Jamais une autorisation totale n'a pourtant été tant discutée. Elle oppose des entreprises globales puissantes: Google, mais aussi Microsoft qui a cherché à la bloquer. Elle porte sur une industrie en plein essor : la publicité en ligne, nerf de l'Internet. Elle fait craindre aux consommateurs des atteintes en matière d'utilisation de données personnelles. Cet article analyse les principales controverses qu'elle a suscitée

Publicité en ligne : Google double clique et gagne

L'acquisition de DoubleClick par Google, une entreprise technologique de publicité en ligne, a été autorisée sans conditions par la Commission des Communautés européennes et par la Commission fédérale pour le commerce des Etats-Unis. Jamais une autorisation totale n'a pourtant été tant discutée. Elle oppose des entreprises globales puissantes: Google, mais aussi Microsoft qui a cherché à la bloquer. Elle porte sur une industrie en plein essor : la publicité en ligne, nerf de l'Internet. Elle fait craindre aux consommateurs des atteintes en matière d'utilisation de données personnelles. Cet article analyse les principales controverses qu'elle a suscitée.