Forms Of Intellectual Property Protection Research Articles

Forms of protection for furniture design in brazilian law

In Brazil, intellectual property is entitled to protect its creator with the fulfillment of its requirements. When it comes to furniture design, there is disagreement about the best form of protection, considering all possible forms of intellectual property protection, since each institute has its own implications. This investigation deals with the possibility of the current national legislation protecting, in its entirety, all artifacts developed by its creator. By reviewing the literature, common and conflicting points between both forms were established, even opening up the questioning for simultaneous protection. Bibliographies specialized in the subject and jurisprudence were analyzed to stablish how the subject is analyzed in the theoretical and practical field.

EU Case Law Guidelines on Registering Three-Dimensional (Shape) EUTM in the Light of the Trademark Reform

The case-law developed by the European Court of Justice aims to ensure consistency and legal certainty in the registration of EU three-dimensional trademarks. It interacts closely with the legislative amendments introduced by the trademark reform, which aim to make the registration procedure for EU trademarks more flexible and transparent, thanks to the European Court of Justice's work in interpreting and developing the law. The problem of the definition and registration procedure of three-dimensional marks is an important issue in EU trademark case law, as this category of marks is the most popular of the non-traditional marks for which the trademark reform provides a legal framework, but also overlaps with other forms of intellectual property protection.

Experimentation and appropriability inearly‐stageventures: Evidence from theUSsoftware industry

AbstractResearch SummaryThis study examines the tension between learning and appropriability that arises as early‐stage ventures experiment in the market. When formal intellectual property protection is weak, the learning benefits of experimentation may be offset by the imitation risks. I test this argument on a hand‐collected dataset of 1,203 US‐based software ventures, using thesoftware release life cycleterminology to measure experimentation and the 2014 US Supreme Court decisionAlice Corp v CLS Bank Internationalas a negative shock to patent protection. Following this ruling, treated ventures are less likely to engage in experimentation. This pattern is stronger for ventures facing low uncertainty or strong competition. Overall, the evidence suggests that ventures perceive the tension between learning and appropriability and adjust their strategy accordingly.Managerial SummaryThe Lean Startup suggests that entrepreneurs should rely on experimentation in bringing their products to the market. However, the return to experimentation also depends on its costs. One potential cost is the risk of imitation. I study whether ventures perceive the trade‐off between learning about the market and the risk of imitation. I hand‐collect data on over 1,200 US‐based software ventures. I analyze the effect of the US Supreme Court decisionAlice Corp v CLS Bank International, which weakened patent protection for firms building financial software. I find that, once patent protection becomes more difficult, ventures conduct less experimentation in the market. Therefore, ventures appear to perceive this trade‐off and take it into account in designing their strategy.

Systemic technology innovation management and analysis of other forms of IP protection

Industry 4.0 and the pandemic have caused recent changes in innovative development, economic situations, and restrictions in various companies and regions of the world, with new stricter legislation related to working conditions, hygiene standards, and health requirements. New technologies are a challenge to the transformation of problem companies and regions, as they often significantly impact economic development. Technological emissions, growing information on dementia among young people, cyber risks, and the risks of so-called advanced technologies (e.g., bio- and nanotechnologies, Industry 4.0 tech) may raise societal concerns about technological progress. This study is part of our long-term research into technological innovation in different companies and regions. Its primary goal is to methodically emphasize the importance and role of the systemic management of technological innovation in companies and regions and analytically compare the innovation success of differently developed regions from a global perspective11A systemic approach heralded a turning point in the history of science and technology and its applications in many innovations. This approach, which considers phenomena and problems to be systems, did not really differ from the classical analytical approach until the mid-twentieth century, but its origins are much older (Garbolino et al., 2018). The systemic approach, as it is currently called, can also be applied appropriately in technology innovation management, in order to analyze more comprehensively, plan, develop, test, implement, and commercialize technological innovations. General Systems Theory, developed by von Bertalanffy (1969), incorporates these ideas. It focuses on a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of innovative activities and their longer-term effects without oversimplifying reality. The systemic approach in this study assumes the study of innovation processes as a system. Micro, mezzo, and macro factors can influence this system. If we want to improve the innovation performance of regions and companies, it is necessary to support not only individual institutions, but also mezzo and macro processes in a given economy; otherwise, it is not possible to expect synergistic results.. This research deals with an important aspect of technology management, namely, the processes of technological identification and the protection of related intellectual property (IP). The primary research question is: How has technological development been distributed across different regions over the last two decades? We hypothesize that Asian countries are increasingly moving away from Europe and North America in terms of technological innovation, other forms of technological IP protection, and overall access to innovation, while the focus is on the development of three non-patent forms of technological innovation protection: industrial designs, trademarks, and utility models. The results of our study reveal a significant difference in the approach to technological innovation management and the form of IP protection between so-called advanced and problem companies and regions. This study was conducted between 2018 and 2022.

Keeping Invention Confidential

This study investigates use of a prevalent but rarely studied form of intellectual property protection: trade secrets. Building on existing survey evidence of firm-level, cross-sectional use of secrecy, we document the effect of stronger legal trade secret protection on the use of trade secrets, and the rate and nature of secret innovation. Our setting is the US oil and gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry, from 2013 to 2018, in states where firms are required to disclose fracking ingredients to regulators barring substantiated claims of trade secrets. We examine how the enactment of the federal 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) affects well-level trade secret use across states with varying levels of pre-DTSA trade secret protection. We find substantial increases in the use of secrets, the generation of new secrets, the use of both external and internal secrets, and breadth of secret invention, as well as project complexity. Our results provide rare systematic empirical evidence on actual trade secret use and document how stronger formal appropriability shapes secret innovation.

Driver or Enabler? The Role of Social Media in Open Innovation

Social media has increasingly drawn the attention of both practitioners and academia as it is fundamentally changing the way individuals and organisations interact, communicate and exchange knowledge. Despite its importance, little is still known on the extent to which companies operationalise the external knowledge flow by establishing partnerships and collaborations. Little is also known about the extent to which knowledge flow management is conducive to further innovation activities and open innovation behaviour. Using data from the UK Innovation Survey and E-commerce Survey, we offer empirical evidence on both the direct and the mediating role of social media in shaping collaborations and partnerships for innovation. We find that social media drive open innovation by facilitating formal collaboration. Our study also draws attention to how social media moderate the link between formal collaboration and appropriability strategy with regard to different forms of Intellectual Property protection and appropriability regimes. The theorising and the estimation results have significant implications for business and academia on the role of social media in shaping innovation in organisations.

The Laws About Virtual Museums in Russia: Museums Studies

Russian rules and policy concerning virtual museums and their activity are analyzed in the article. The authors revealed the current museums problems in the Internet, studied the possibilities of digital copies of museums’ artefacts application and their legal position. This article tends to favour the view that new forms of intellectual property protection are needed to adequately protect heritage in the Internet.

Sertifikat o dodatnoj zaštiti - nedavne odluke suda pravde Evropske Unije

In recent years, public health systems in high-income countries have been heavily exposed to pressures due to high drug prices. High drug prices are affected by market monopolies that pharmaceutical companies have thanks to patents, i.e. the exclusive rights granted to them for drugs. An additional factor affecting high drug prices is the extended forms of intellectual property protection, including the extension of the exclusivity period after the expiration of a patent for medical devices. The supplementary protection certificate as a form of a supplementary protection for pharmaceutical products in the European Union is regulated by the Regulation 469/2009. This form of protection is also known in the national patent regulations. Since the entry into force of the Regulation 469/2009, there has been debated the question of whether the supplementary protection certificate should be available for new therapeutic uses of previously approved active ingredients. In addition, the subject of interpretation was also the Article 3(a) of the Regulation 469/2009 requiring that the "product" (i.e. the active ingredient or combination of active ingredients) being the subject matter of the SPC application, should be "protected by the basic patent". The author analyzes several important decisions of the EU Court of Justice, with an emphasis put on the recent verdicts in both the "Santen" and "Royality Pharma" cases. In the grounds of these cases, there have widely been discussed the issue concerning the encouragements given to pharmaceutical companies being involved into medical researches in order to stimulate their investment into innovation treatments.

The Missing Algorithm: Safeguarding Brady Against the Rise of Trade Secrecy in Policing

Trade secrecy, a form of intellectual property protection, serves the important societal function of promoting innovation. But as police departments across the country increasingly rely on proprietary technologies like facial recognition and predictive policing tools, an uneasy tension between due process and trade secrecy has developed: to fulfill Brady’s constitutional promise of a fair trial, defendants must have access to the technologies accusing them, access that trade secrecy inhibits. Thus far, this tension is being resolved too far in favor of the trade secret holder—and at too great an expense to the defendant. The wrong balance has been struck. This Note offers three contributions. First, it explains the use of algorithms in law enforcement and the intertwined role of trade secrecy protections. Second, it shows how trade secrecy clashes with the Due Process Clause—the Constitution’s mechanism for correcting the power asymmetry between the state and the defendant—and argues that due process should not waver simply because a source of evidence is digital, not human. Third, it proposes a solution that better balances a defendant’s due process rights with intellectual property protections.

Securitizing Innovation to Protect Trade Secrets Between “the East” and “the West”: A Neo-Schumpeterian Public Legal Reading

Author(s): Vecellio Segate, Riccardo | Abstract: The first target of today’s global commercial and military espionage, trade secrets, are the only form of intellectual property protection to be based on the necessity of nondisclosure and secrecy rather than on the paradigm of publicity and exploitability, with the obvious consequence that where confidentiality ends, no trade secret factually exists anymore. As such, current judicial remedies to trade secret thefts simply miss the point, treating trade secrets as rights which can be restored, rather than as assets that once stolen, are lost forever. Moreover, trade secrets often represent the “backbone” of a country’s development: an invaluable strategic advantage for entire industrial systems, innovation environments, and national economies. Whereas a trade secret theft occurring within domestic borders transfers exploitability rather than causing damage to the economic ecosystem of the country concerned, international trade secret thefts may jeopardize states’ economy and public security alike. For these reasons, the only way to protect trade secrets by law is through ensuring that their secrecy is reasonably safe by means of compulsory cybersecurity and cyber-hygiene standards to be complied with by their owners. When it comes to this specific form of IP, the only protection is afforded with prevention: injunctions and compensations can work as remedies for other IP rights’ misappropriations and misexploitations, but do nothing to restore the peculiarity of a trade secret which is, indeed, its secrecy. Not only should companies be compelled to adopt and implement reasonable sector-specific IT security measures and procedures, but licensing agreements including know-how should feature a specific cybersecurity clause to be carefully negotiated. The new cybersecurity regimes of world powers like China seem to capture this problem, and to (involuntarily?) provide useful tools for addressing it beyond the schemes of intellectual property or tort (confidentiality) laws. Regrettably, other countries in the Pacific region appear to keep the belief that trade secret thefts are a private affair of the breached companies, which should seek redress via traditional judicial channels. This is to be deemed an outdated, misleading, shortsighted and ineffective approach.

A Tale of the Firm and its Trade Secrets: An Examination of the Theory of the Firm, its Trade Secrets and the Law Uncovers a Tango of Interdependence with Frustrations and Successes

Unlike other forms of intellectual property, trade secrets are considered, in nature, perpetual. Similarly, the corporate form – the firm – is, too, considered, perpetual. Trade secrets, whether they are one part of, or the whole of a firm’s intellectual and proprietary knowledge, they are inherent to a firm’s sustainability and success – they drive a given firm, specifically in its creation of value. Reflective of this point, there, too, is an inherent importance through which the firm’s institutional structure and its accompanying laws, serve, fuel and protects its trade secrets. Hence, in an attempt to truly understand the scope and capacity of trade secrets and its accompanying law, doctrine and precedent, an examination of its relationship to and with the theory of the firm is necessitated. This paper is premised on the perspective that the bodies of law that implicate firms and trade secrets – corporate law, intellectual property and trade secrets – cannot be fully comprehended through separate and singular examinations exclusive of the other. Instead, to fully appreciate the dimensions of each body of law, and the legal spaces they occupy – the firm and its intellectual capital of the trade secrets kind – an examination of this indelible relationship is warranted. This relationship – a tango of codependence, frustration and successes – mirrors the words Witold Rybczynski articulated about the law. He once said, the law is a “very restrained jazz – it involves improvisation [but] this does not mean [] the result is accidental or that there are no rules.” The activities and effects that occur within trade secret and the law are not hermetically sealed from effecting and being affected by the firm, corporate law, theory and governance. Firm make a deliberate and conscious decision in deciding to maintain its intellectual knowledge as a trade secret rather than pursue another form of intellectual property protection. Such decision is reflective of the didactic connection between that firm’s structure and various governance mechanisms, agency costs juxtaposed against the backdrop of how relevant its intellectual capital – its trade secrets – are inherent to its competitive advantage, and how aspects of corporate law and regulations, trade secret rights and protections, impact the firm. Therefore, in order to understand the true scope of trade secret law, this paper is aimed at examining this interdependent relationship between the firm and its trade secret. In order to effectively examine this didactic relationship between the firm and its intellectual capital, this paper is organized in two large sections. Part I of this paper examines how the organizational and institutional structure of the firm impacts its intellectual capital of the trade secret variety. Specifically, it will examine how the theory of the firm, agency and monitoring costs, and corporate social responsibility impacts the management of intellectual capital, protects trade secrets and might secure long-term innovation output. This is followed by Part II, that analyzes and examines how the law related to trade secrets and how a firm’s trade secrets has the potential to both positively and negatively impact the firm’s shareholder wealth and, hence, firm value.

The Moderating Effect of Intellectual Property Rights on Relationship between Innovation and Company Performance in Manufacturing Sector

Abstract This paper examines whether the intellectual property rights of manufacturing company moderate the relationships between innovation and company performance in manufacturing sector. We argue that technologically more advanced manufacturers rely on exploiting intellectual capital in their business. Thus, there is a growth of the use of formal intellectual property protection methods because protective rights are critical as it prevents replication by potential competitors. The objective of the study is to understand how intellectual property rights contribute as new ventures transform their innovation potential and creativity into market value, profit, productivity, new jobs, wages, and competitiveness. The multi-item constructs were tested by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) each set of scale items using the principal axis with the varimax method provided in SPSS. This procedure may help to reduce multi-collinearity or error variance correlations among indicators in the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The findings indicate a positive correlation between patenting and new ventures’ growth, access to venture capital and new knowledge. This study provides empirical evidence that intellectual property is a set of valuable intangible assets and managing innovation better than its competitors is one of the main objectives of a manufacturing company.

Awareness of Copyright and its Policies among the PG Teaching Faculty: A Study

Copyright is a form of intellectual property protection granted under Copyright Act to the creators of original works of authorship. Libraries are the backbone of any organization or an institution. Alongside, libraries are also the torch bearers, in the creating awareness of the IPR aspects to its user community. A study on finding the awareness levels in the area of intellectual property rights in general and copyright in specific is the need of the hour in the universities, as they grooming the next generation of workers happens in there. Here is a study aimed at to see how the faculties in the university are aware of copyright and its implications. There are a total of 62 respondents participated in the survey. The data has been analyses and interpreted accordingly and presented in the form of tables and figures suitably. The study has dwells in detail about Awareness on copyright, Purpose of using the copyrighted material, Awareness on copyright policies and on type of the copyrighted material, Knowledge on copyright, Awareness on Indian copyright act 1957, Views on copyright protection for their work, Safeguarding the interest of copyright owners and Understanding on the IP concepts among the teaching community. The study focuses on Awareness on copyright, use of copyright, to access the user level of knowledge on copyright and awareness on implications of copyright violation for self-learning, research as well as teaching among the faculty members of Post-Graduation Departments of Tumkur University, Tumakuru.

The Importance of Fostering Incremental Innovation

This briefing paper discusses the fundamental relevance of incremental innovation and the role that patent protection plays in this regard. The text begins by elaborating on the importance of innovation in general before focusing on the particular significance of incremental advances in technology. Subsequently, it introduces the patent mechanism, including the underlying economic rationale and the key characteristics of this form of intellectual property protection. Finally, the paper presents specific challenges that relate to the patentability of incremental innovation.

Trade secrets and innovation: Evidence from the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine

Research Summary: Does heightened employer‐friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining U.S. state‐level legal adoption of a doctrine allowing employers to curtail inventor mobility if the employee would “inevitably disclose” trade secrets, we investigate the impact of a shifting trade secrecy regime on individual‐level patenting outcomes. Using a difference‐in‐differences design taking unaffected U.S. inventors as the comparison group, we find strengthening employer‐friendly trade secrecy adversely affects innovation. We then investigate why. We do not find empirical support for diminished idea recombination from suppressed inventor mobility as the operative mechanism. While shifting intellectual property protection away from patenting into trade secrecy has some explanatory power, our results are consistent with reduced individual‐level incentives to signaling quality to the external labor market.Managerial Summary: While managers often list trade secrecy protection as their most important appropriation mechanism form and basis of competitive advantage (even more often than formal intellectual property protection), researchers have a hard time studying the effect of such secrets. We use a changing trade secrecy legal environment in some U.S. states (the introduction of the inevitable disclosure doctrine [IDD]) to study its effect on inventor‐level innovation. We find that a strengthened employer‐friendly trade secrecy regime adversely affects inventor‐level innovation. While part of the effect is due to substituting trade secrecy protection for patents, we also find that inventors’ diminished external labor market prospects may dampen their innovation output. Consequently, while employers may wish for strengthened trade secrecy protections, the results may paradoxically be against their innovation interests.

Why Do Startups Use Trade Secrets?

Empirical studies of the use of trade secrecy are scant, and those focusing on startups, non-existent. In this paper, we present the first set of data — drawn from the Berkeley Patent Survey — on the use of trade secrets by U.S. startup companies in the software, biotechnology, medical device, and hardware industries. Specifically, we report on the prevalence of trade secrecy usage among startups. Additionally, we assess the importance of trade secrets in relation to other forms of intellectual property protection and barriers to entry, such as patents, copyrights, first-mover advantage, and complementary assets. We segment these results by a variety of factors, including industry, company business model, overall revenue, patenting propensity, funding sources, innovation types, and licensing. From this segmentation, we implement a basic regression model and report on those factors showing a statistically significant relationship in the use of trade secrets by startups. Our results point to three major findings. First, trade secrecy serves other important aims aside from first-mover advantage. Second, trade secrets may act both as economic complements and substitutes to patenting. Third, trade secrets may serve as important strategic assets, functioning much in the same manner as patents in terms of licensing and setting the boundaries of the firm.

Challenges to developing cultivars in the public sector

Photo courtesy of Dean Calma/IAEA New plant cultivars are developed in both the private and public sector. Much of the work done in the private sector is focused corn, soy, and other high-value crops. Researchers in the public sector are more likely to deal with minor crops, perennials, or specialty crops within a specific geographical region and are typically based at land grant universities or with the USDA. Although public breeding programs have a high return on investment, there has been an overall decline in funding for them in recent decades. As funding has decreased, there has been an increase in intellectual property protections for cultivars developed at public universities. Intellectual property protection may provide a revenue stream for the university but can also limit the use of germplasm in further research and development. William Tracy, a plant breeder at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and colleagues are interested in how increased intellectual property protections are impacting plant breeding in the public sector. Tracy is a co-author on a recent article in Crop Science (http://bit.ly/2wVzP5b) summarizing results of a survey that asked plant breeders how intellectual property and material transfer agreements (MTA) affect their work. Survey questions were developed with input from an intellectual property symposium. Focusing on the responses of plant breeders actively releasing finished cultivars, the article provides information about restrictions put on shared germplasm and the current status of plant breeding programs from across the U.S. The authors report that more than 50% of respondents indicated the most common source of new genetic material used in their own breeding programs is germplasm from other programs. In addition, almost all respondents reported sharing germplasm with others. However, approximately 60% of respondents indicated sharing germplasm under a material transfer agreement, and 70% of respondents indicated most or all of their cultivars had some form of intellectual property protection. Given the prevalence of intellectual property protection, it is not surprising that greater than 55% of respondents indicated intellectual property restrictions on germplasm from public breeding programs have a negative impact on their work. This suggests that the short-term gain in revenue from intellectual property protections could result in a long-term barrier to the development of new cultivars in the public sector. One way to alleviate some of the MTA restrictions, according to Tracy, would be if researchers could develop a set of agreed-upon best practices among public plant breeders. Currently, individual researchers and their universities set up MTAs, leading to wide variation in MTA restrictions from one institution to the next. With widely accepted guidelines, universities could balance the need for intellectual property protection, and researchers could gain greater access to germplasm sources to advance plant breeding programs. The survey also revealed how demographics could lead to a setback in public cultivar development and release in near future. More than 55% of respondents had been in the field for 21 or more years. As these individuals retire, cultivar release is likely to decline until early career breeders establish programs. Making the situation worse is the fact that almost a quarter of respondents said that there was no plan for their position to be maintained, and another third were unsure if their position would be continued. This would affect not only cultivar development, but also limit the potential for students to gain hands-on training in plant breeding, a skill that will still be in demand. One area of focus in public breeding could be to develop crops resilient to a more variable climate, Tracy says, such as, “profitable forage crops or perennial crops because perennial crops can better resist severe weather events and come back and grow quickly, perhaps getting the farmer some profit.” Tracy and his co-authors hope to bring the issues raised in this article to the attention of plant breeders and university administrators, who can help find a way to balance intellectual property with cultivar development and look for new opportunities for public-sector breeding programs in the future. Dig Deeper Read the full study in Crop Science: http://bit.ly/2wVzP5b.

Global Access to Maize Germplasm Provided by the US National Plant Germplasm System and by US Plant Breeders

Access to high‐yielding germplasm increases agricultural productivity. Plant Variety Protection (PVP) is the most globally used form of Intellectual Property Protection. Commercially available varieties protected solely by PVP can be accessed for further breeding within the country or region of protection. Unlike the practice in most other countries, the USDA has a policy of providing parental inbred lines of hybrids into the public domain following expiration of their protection by PVP. Parental lines and varieties protected by utility patents are also available in the public domain following expiration of protection. These distributions represent fresh opportunities for researchers, hybrid seed producers and plant breeders, nationally and internationally. As a contribution to the continuing debate over ownership and access to plant germplasm we report distributions of maize (Zea mays L.) by the US National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS). During 1988–2015 the NPGS distributed 251,926 packets to 7,582 requestors, fulfilling 10,432 orders. Distributions were primarily to US entities (87%), with 32,520 (13%) to a total of 79 foreign countries. Of the total NPGS maize distributions reported here, 45,968 (18%) were expired or off‐PVP germplasm. We hope that access provided to this germplasm will act as a reminder that the primary benefit of the Multilateral System under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) is indeed that of having facilitated global access to germplasm and that this concept will remain an important guiding principle during further implementation of the Treaty.

Patents and Perverts

This project reveals the power of gender and sexuality norms in the deep discourse of pivotal American case law on design patents. In Part 1 (Summer 2015), I show that late nineteenth-century cultural developments in the urban Northeast gave rise to a stigma surrounding the ornamental and decorative works under the then-exclusive legal purview of design-patent protection. Among the politically dominant segments of American society, the creation, appreciation, and consumption of design its own sake grew increasingly intertwined with notions of decadence, effeminacy, and sexual deviance. In Part 2 (forthcoming Feb. 2016), I will examine influential design-patent decisions from the 1870s through the 1930s against this cultural backdrop. My close reading of these decisions will demonstrate that federal judges, particularly in leading cases decided by the Second Circuit, increasingly used design-patent disputes as a vehicle for the performance and endorsement of prevailing gender norms. The resulting doctrine relegated design patents to near-total irrelevance as a viable form of intellectual property protection for a large and crucial portion of the Twentieth Century. [In a forthcoming monograph, Patents and Perverts: The Hidden Moral Agenda of American Design Law (Cambridge University Press forthcoming 2017), I will examine doctrinal distortions in U.S. copyright and trademark law that resulted from the judiciary's marginalization of design patents. Some of these distortions, including the perpetually problematic doctrines of conceptual separability and aesthetic functionality, persist to this day -- even as an array of jurisprudential, social, and economic factors have facilitated the reemergence of design patents as a viable form of IP protection.]

The roles of patents and research and development incentives in biopharmaceutical innovation.

Patents and other forms of intellectual property protection play essential roles in encouraging innovation in biopharmaceuticals. As part of the "21st Century Cures" initiative, Congress is reviewing the policy mechanisms designed to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of new treatments. Debate continues about how best to balance patent and intellectual property incentives to encourage innovation, on the one hand, and generic utilization and price competition, on the other hand. We review the current framework for accomplishing these dual objectives and the important role of patents and regulatory exclusivity (together, the patent-based system), given the lengthy, costly, and risky biopharmaceutical research and development process. We summarize existing targeted incentives, such as for orphan drugs and neglected diseases, and we consider the pros and cons of proposed voluntary or mandatory alternatives to the patent-based system, such as prizes and government research and development contracting. We conclude that patents and regulatory exclusivity provisions are likely to remain the core approach to providing incentives for biopharmaceutical research and development. However, prizes and other voluntary supplements could play a useful role in addressing unmet needs and gaps in specific circumstances.