Filing Fees Research Articles

Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems: the Case of Public Procurement Bid Disputes Management in KenyaP.

Purpose: This study sought to assess the efficacy of bid disputes management mechanism in Kenya. Theoretical Framework: Transparency in public procurement proceedings is a concern for most stakeholders. Allowing aggrieved bidders to challenge decisions of procuring entities is considered a critical development in the space of public procurement. The effectiveness and efficiency of bid disputes management mechanism should therefore be a concern for procuring entities, bidders, and development partners especially. This aspect is yet to be explored extensively in Africa. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS) as propagated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) helps evaluate the quality of public procurement systems and subsequently strategize on necessary reforms. This study applied MAPS to assess the efficacy of the bid disputes management mechanism in Kenya. Findings: It was established that overall, the public procurement bid dispute management mechanism in Kenya was effective and efficient. However, shortcomings were noted concerning resourcing of Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB), unaffordable filing fees and accessibility of comprehensive, simple, and clear information on filing procedures. Research, Practical and Social Implications: The findings of this study offer policy recommendations that will help promote effective and efficient management of public procurement bid disputes. Originality/Value: The results of this study contribute to theory, practice and literature in the field of public procurement which is less researched in the Eastern Africa Region. The findings of the study can be replicated in countries that have based their procurement reforms on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Public Procurement. It is to be appreciated that application of MAPS indicators allows for subjective judgments by the assessor.

Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems: the Case of Public Procurement Bid Disputes Management in KenyaP.

Purpose: This study sought to assess the efficacy of bid disputes management mechanism in Kenya. Theoretical Framework: Transparency in public procurement proceedings is a concern for most stakeholders. Allowing aggrieved bidders to challenge decisions of procuring entities is considered a critical development in the space of public procurement. The effectiveness and efficiency of bid disputes management mechanism should therefore be a concern for procuring entities, bidders, and development partners especially. This aspect is yet to be explored extensively in Africa. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS) as propagated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) helps evaluate the quality of public procurement systems and subsequently strategize on necessary reforms. This study applied MAPS to assess the efficacy of the bid disputes management mechanism in Kenya. Findings: It was established that overall, the public procurement bid dispute management mechanism in Kenya was effective and efficient. However, shortcomings were noted concerning resourcing of Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB), unaffordable filing fees and accessibility of comprehensive, simple, and clear information on filing procedures. Research, Practical and Social Implications: The findings of this study offer policy recommendations that will help promote effective and efficient management of public procurement bid disputes. Originality/Value: The results of this study contribute to theory, practice and literature in the field of public procurement which is less researched in the Eastern Africa Region. The findings of the study can be replicated in countries that have based their procurement reforms on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Public Procurement. It is to be appreciated that application of MAPS indicators allows for subjective judgments by the assessor.

The Racially Disparate Influence of Filing Fees on Eviction Rates

Eviction is a common and consequential event in the lives of tenants and is shaped by the legal environments in which it takes place. In this study, we show that eviction filing fees, or the amounts of money it costs landlords to begin formal evictions, have a large effect on eviction practices. Specifically, fees that are higher by $76 (one standard deviation) lead to lower eviction filing rates by 1.71 percentage points (0.26 standard deviations) and lower eviction judgment rates by 0.49 percentage points (0.19 standard deviation). Filing fees affect not only the rate but also the purpose of filing, as lower fees make landlords more likely to file serially against the same tenants as a form of rent collection. Each of these effects appears to be disproportionately large in majority-Black tracts, suggesting that low filing fees have disparate impacts on Black renters. These findings contribute to our understanding of the legal basis of housing insecurity and the racialization of eviction practices in the United States.

Belgium ∙ Implementation of the ECN+ Directive in Belgium: Codification, Clarification and Enhanced Cooperation are Overshadowed by New Merger Filing Fees

Belgium ∙ Implementation of the ECN+ Directive in Belgium: Codification, Clarification and Enhanced Cooperation are Overshadowed by New Merger Filing Fees

Why Do the Poor Not Have a Constitutional Right to File Civil Claims in Courts Under Their First Amendment Right to Petition the Government for Redress of Grievances?

Since 1963, the United States Supreme Court has recognized the constitutional right of entities and persons to pursue civil legal claims in American courts under the First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances. However, in a series of three cases decided by the Supreme Court in the early 1970’s - Boddie v. Connecticut, United States v. Kras and Ortwein v. Schwab - the Court inexplicably declined to address the appellants’ claims that they have a constitutional right to access the courts to seek resolution of their civil legal claims. In each of these three cases, the indigent appellants had been initially denied the right to pursue their civil legal claims because they could not afford to pay the applicable civil filing fees. As a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in these three cases, some poor persons in America can constitutionally be denied access to American courts to pursue their civil legal claims if they cannot afford to pay the court filing fees. The author contends that all Americans, including the poor, have a constitutional right under the first Amendment right to petition government to seek redress of grievances, including the right to file civil legal claims in courts. Like the right to vote, the exercise of this First Amendment right should not be limited by a person’s financial inability to pay a government fee. When this First Amendment right is made available to all Americans regardless of their ability to pay court filing fees, then the poor will be able to access the judicial branches of government to seek redress of their grievances.

Status of current medicolegal reform in the United States: a neurosurgical perspective.

There are approximately 85,000 lawsuits filed against medical practitioners every year in the US. Among these lawsuits, neurosurgery has been identified as a "high-risk specialty" with exceptional chance of having medical malpractice suits filed. Major issues affecting the overall medicolegal environment include tort reform, the formation of medical review panels, the increasing practice of defensive medicine, and the rising costs of medical insurance. In this study, the authors provide a concise update of the current medicolegal environments of the 50 states and provide a general guide to favorable and unfavorable states in which to practice neurosurgery. Data were acquired related to state-by-state medical review panel status, noneconomic damage caps, economic damage caps, and civil suit filing fees. States were placed into 5 categories based on the status of their current medicolegal environment. Of the 50 states in the US, 18 have established a medical review panel process. Fifteen states have a mandatory medical review process, whereas 3 states rely on a voluntary process. Thirty-five states have tort reform and have placed a cap on noneconomic damages. These caps range from $250,000 to $2,350,000, with the median cap of $465,900. Only 8 states have placed a cap on total economic damages. These caps range from $500,000 to $2,350,000, with the median cap of $1,050,000. All states have a filing fee for a medical malpractice lawsuit. These costs range from $37 to $884, with the median cost for filing of $335. Medicolegal healthcare reform will continue to play a vital role in physicians' lives. It will dictate if physicians may practice proactively or be forced to act defensively. With medicolegal reform varying greatly among states, it will ultimately dictate if physicians move into or away from certain states and thus guide the availability of healthcare services. A desirable legal system for neurosurgeons, including caps on economic and noneconomic damages and availability of medical review panels, can lead to safer practice.

How India Reduced Patent Approval Period from 80 Months to 8 Months

Indian patenting process received much flak for long period and stringest criteria for innovative step. While not diluting position on incremental innovations, computer related innovations, genetically modified seeds/ plants/ organs, Government of India has taken several steps to benefit startups, defined as firms within Rs 100 crore turnover. In addition to liberal funding and tax benefits, the Government announced 80% rebate in patent filing fees and 50% rebate in trademark filing fees. Large number of Patent facilitators(425) and Trademark facilitators (606) have been empaneled under this scheme to provide free-of-charge services to Startups. Additionally, Startups are considered for expedited examination of patent applications to reduce time taken in granting patents. This paper summerises Indian patent system drawing out negative list, explains the patenting methodology, analyses impact of pre-grant opposition and closes with remarkable turnaround with provision for expedited examination.

Serial Eviction Filing: Civil Courts, Property Management, and the Threat of Displacement

Abstract Drawing on over 8 million eviction court records from twenty-eight states, this study shows the role that eviction filings play in extracting monetary sanctions from tenants. In so doing, it documents an unanticipated feature of housing insecurity: serial eviction filings. Serial eviction filings occur when a property manager files to evict the same household repeatedly from the same address. Almost half of all eviction filings in our sample are associated with serial filings. Combining multivariate analysis with in-depth interviews conducted with thirty-three property managers and ten attorneys and court officials, we document the dynamics and consequences of serial eviction filings. When legal environments expedite the eviction process, property managers use the housing court to collect rent and late fees, passing costs on to tenants. Serial eviction filings exacerbate tenants’ housing cost burden and compromise their ability to find future housing. Using tract-level rent and filing fees, we estimate that each eviction filing translates into approximately $180 in fines and fees for the typical renter household, raising their monthly housing cost by 20%. The study challenges existing views of eviction as a discrete event concentrated among poor renters. Rather, it may be better conceived of as a routinized, drawn-out process affecting a broader segment of the rental market and entailing consequences beyond displacement.

Optimal Design of Private Litigation

This article translates and extends Becker (1968) from public law enforcement to private litigation by examining optimal legal system design in a model with private suits, signals of case strength, court error, and two types of primary behavior: harmful acts that may be deterred and benign acts that may be chilled. The instruments examined are filing fees or subsidies that may be imposed on either party, damage awards and payments by unsuccessful plaintiffs (each of which may be decoupled), and the stringency of the evidence threshold (burden of proof). With no constraints, results arbitrarily close to the first best can be implemented. Prior analyses of optimal damage awards, decoupling, and fee shifting are shown to involve special cases. More important, previous results change qualitatively when implicit assumptions are relaxed. For example, introducing a filing fee can make it optimal to minimize what losing plaintiffs pay winning defendants and to reduce the evidence threshold as much as possible — even though the direct effect of these adjustments is to chill desirable behavior, a key feature absent in prior work.

Optimal design of private litigation

This article translates and extends Becker (1968) from public law enforcement to private litigation by examining optimal legal system design in a model with private suits, signals of case strength, court error, and two types of primary behavior: harmful acts that may be deterred and benign acts that may be chilled. The instruments examined are filing fees or subsidies that may be imposed on either party, damage awards and payments by unsuccessful plaintiffs (each of which may be decoupled), and the stringency of the evidence threshold (burden of proof). With no constraints, results arbitrarily close to the first best can be implemented. Prior analyses of optimal damage awards, decoupling, and fee shifting are shown to involve special cases. More important, previous results change qualitatively when implicit assumptions are relaxed. For example, introducing a filing fee can make it optimal to minimize what losing plaintiffs pay winning defendants and to reduce the evidence threshold as much as possible — even though the direct effect of these adjustments is to chill desirable behavior, a key feature absent in prior work.

Costly Signaling, Pleading, and Settlement

This paper develops a game-theoretic model that explores the use of costly signals in a litigation environment with private information held by the plaintiff. I compare the costly signaling model with the canonical models of settlement through screening (Bebchuk 1984) and settlement signaling (Reinganum and Wilde 1986), and show that the costly signaling model compares favorably to these models along several dimensions, suggesting that it merits further exploration as a tool for studying suit and settlement. Under plausible conditions, costly signaling (rather than other signaling or screening mechanisms) will emerge endogenously in litigation, and its results are more robust to changes in modeling assumptions. I apply the costly signaling model to study the effects of filing fees and heightened pleading standards, and find counterintuitive and policy-relevant results: steeply raising the costs of litigation through filing fees or heightened pleading standards may lower the total costs of litigation without reducing the number and size of settlements obtained by plaintiffs; but from a private welfare perspective, raising pleading standards may hurt plaintiffs even if their case outcomes are unaffected.

Pre-employment costs associated with H-2A agricultural workers and the effects of the ‘60-minute rule’

Agricultural employers increasingly are turning to the foreign guest worker program, known as H-2A, as a means to secure a legal workforce. This paper outlines the procedural aspects and costs of recruiting and hiring H-2A workers. Cost data is from a 2014 survey of citrus harvesters and defines pre-employment costs as filing fees, advertising, surety bonds, travel, and housing. The pre-employment costs associated with guest workers are estimated to be nearly $ 2,000 per worker. The survey was motivated by the ‘60-minute rule’ imposed by the U.S. Department of Labor prior to the 2012-13 citrus harvesting season. Cost data were collected across two crop season, 2012-13 and 2013-14, to analyze the cost implications of the rule. We found that the 60-minute rule significantly increased filing fees. These fees, however, represent a very small share of total costs and overall pre-employment costs associated with the H-2A program did not significantly change.

Secretarial audit under companies act, 2013 - a move towards better corporate governance

Secretarial Audit is a compliance audit. It is a part of total compliance management in an organization. The Secretarial Audit is an effective tool for corporate compliance management. It helps ensure timely corrective measures when non-compliance is detected. The Companies Act, 2013, seems to revolve around this concept of compliance and the ways to ensure its implementation. The enforcement mechanism is also well incorporated in the Act itself providing the requisite arms to strike home the point. The corporate sector as well as the professional community is required to be extra vigilant in discharging their functions to ensure that they are compliant in their approach. Over abundance of provisions spread over the Act and the rules coupled with enhanced penal provisions, inflated additional filing fees and fraud related provisions make the situation look more frightening. Audit is perhaps the only mechanism which provides some sort of comfort and assurance that controls and checks are in place. An audit helps to ensure that the company is following the right principles and procedures and also highlights areas which require attention to make timely corrections. The study focuses on the importance and various aspects of Secretarial Audit under the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013.

REGULATIONS OF ORPHAN DRUGS IN USA, EU AND INDIA – A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Orphan drugs are the drugs and natural products used in treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of rare disease. The orphan drug regulation varies in different countries. Initially a guideline (Orphan Drug Act) for orphan drugs has been made in the USA. Exemption from application filing fees, tax credits for clinical research, marketing exclusivity for definite period of time and grant for phase I/II clinical trials are among the benefits given to the manufacturer of orphan drugs. As a result of these benefits number of drugs for the treatment of rare disease has been increased significantly in the last few decades. The orphan drug program can help the pharmaceutical companies in earning profit and recovering their investment even with small patient population in the developed countries. In 2001 a conference was held by the Indian Drugs Manufactures Association (IDMA) where a group of pharmacologists requested the Indian Government to establish the Orphan Drug Act in India. Indian rare disease population depends on developed countries approved orphan drugs because regulation for the orphan drugs has not been made by the Indian government. Developing countries are also feeling they should do something to promote the research and manufacturing of orphan drugs. The scarcity of regulation of orphan drugs adversely affects the economic growth of Indian medicinal industries. The present study reviews the orphan drug regulations in US, EU and India and raises some of the recent issues concerned to their regulation.

On the fee elasticity of the demand for trademarks in Europe

Over the last 20 years there has been a surge in national trademark applications in Europe. This increase in filings has been interpreted as a sign of increased innovative performance. In this paper, we argue that the explanation is much simpler. First, using a novel dataset, we document that trademark filing fees have been steadily decreasing and converging across countries in Europe. Second, using dynamic panel data econometrics, we find that national trademark filings are price-sensitive: a fee decrease by 10% increases filings at an office by about 10.5%. These estimates suggest that a substantial proportion of the rise in filing numbers can be explained by lower fees. We also document that trademark filings at national offices in Europe became more elastic after the mid-1990s. Arguably, this is because the European Community Trademark became available as an attractive alternative to national filings in 1996 and increased the price-sensitivity of applicants.

The European Trade Secrets Directive (ETSD): Nothing New Under the Sun?

Trade secrets are essential types of intellectual property assets, especially so for R&D and innovation-intensive firms. They may represent the conscious choice of an inventor not to file for intellectual property rights’ protection (by means of, e.g., a patent application), so as to avoid being bound by the strings attached to filing for patent protection – such as public disclosure requirements with regard to the underlying invention and patent filing and maintenance fees – but they may also represent the second-best choice of an inventor in respect of protecting the underlying invention – such as when the underlying invention, regardless of its value-adding features to the business of the inventor, does not qualify for patent protection under applicable intellectual property laws. In the world of today, where keywords such as “digital”, “big data”, “data analytics”, “data mining”, “cloud computing” and the like are gaining ever increasing momentum in the vocabulary of business men and women and value proposition creators, it is only more than likely that trade secrets – absent any substantial reform on patent law – will assume a much more important role in the innovation ecosystem, as an eligible form of protection for important intellectual property assets, such as algorithms, methodologies, formulas, among others. The European Union (EU) and its member states are, unfortunately, and to the present date, not exactly a “country for trade secret holders”. To be sure, the currently fragmented legal framework amongst EU member states makes it incredibly difficult for trade secret holders to ascertain the exact boundaries and content of their substantive legal position as regards their trade secrets. Things get even tougher, though, when it comes to trade secret holders enforcing their rights on a cross-border basis throughout the EU territory. In response to these issues and recognizing the importance in ensuring effective trade secret protection in a cross-EU fashion, the European Commission (EC) proposed, and the Council of the EU (Council) revised, a proposal for a European Trade Secrets Directive. This paper’s objective is to critically analyze the legislative proposal of the EC and the revision of such proposal by the Council, in search for answers to the question of knowing whether or not does the proposed (and revised) European Trade Secrets Directive effectively responds to the issues remarked in the EU’s legal framework for trade secret protection and enforcement, and whether it improves the legal position of trade secret holders, in a way that will economically reward innovative firms and individuals for their efforts in the development of meaningful, value-adding inventions.

Patent Portfolio Management of Sequential Inventions: Evidence from US Patent Renewal Data

This paper investigates a firm’s decisions regarding renewal and patenting of sequential inventions and tests the implications of a dynamic model of patent portfolio management where a firm makes the decisions taking into account complementarity and substitutability across sequential inventions. We use cross-price effects of renewal fees and filing fees on renewal and patenting decisions to identify complementarity or substitutability. We find that higher filing fees are associated with a lower probability of patent renewal, which supports the idea of complementarity across sequential inventions.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Assessing Access to Civil Justice in Russia

Kathryn Hendley argues that easy access to the civil courts in Russia is a deliberate policy choice aimed at countering the popular image of courts as hopelessly corrupt and incompetent that is propagated by the media. Judicial officials present judges as heroically struggling to cope with the deluge of cases in a timely fashion. Relying on field work and analysis of caseload data, Hendley shows that the burden on trial-level Russian judges has been exaggerated for effect. She documents the procedural mechanisms available to facilitate rapid turnaround of simple cases. She argues that the flood of cases could easily be stanched by increasing filing fees, but that judicial officials cling to the open door policy as a way of proving the value of the courts. Rather than discouraging the demand for courts, they prefer to tinker with the supply side of the equation.

An Irrational Oversight: Applying the PLRA's Fee Restrictions to Collateral Prisoner Litigation

The Federal Prison Litigation Reform Act precludes prisoners from filing lawsuits in forma pauperis and imposes significant limitations on the recovery of attorney’s fees. Many states have followed the lead of Congress by prohibiting their courts from waiving filing fees in prisoner cases. The federal fee provisions have withstood a barrage of constitutional challenges, with courts uniformly holding that the provisions are rationally related to a legitimate government interest in deterring frivolous inmate litigation. Many courts, however, apply these fee restrictions in a manner that cannot be justified by the analysis generally supporting the constitutionality of the provisions. In both state and federal courts, fee restrictions are applied to litigation collateral to prisoners’ incarceration, such as appeals of bankruptcy and divorce court rulings. The denial of in forma pauperis status to prisoners in these proceedings bears no relationship to the government interest in deterring frivolous inmate litigation, instead imposing a substantial burden on the ability of prisoners to pursue important matters that is not felt by other indigent litigants. To the extent that state and federal fee restrictions continue to be applied to certain collateral prisoner litigation, they are unconstitutional.

Cheaper patents

The 1883 Patents Act in Britain provides perspective for modern patent policy reforms because it radically changed incentives for inventors by reducing filing fees by 84 percent. Patents increased 2.5-fold after the reform, which was evenly distributed across the geography of inventors, the organization of invention and sectors. By realizing a large demand for cheaper patents the reform increased the propensity to patent and shifted inventive activity inside the patent system. It did not increase innovation as measured by changes in the distribution of high and low value patents and citations to English inventor patents in the United States.