Patent Pools Research Articles

Patent pool and dominant design: An empirical study of patent pool from MPEG-LA

A patent pool is a marketing alliance that licenses technology to manufacturers. We build on previous research on patent pools that have mainly focused on transaction cost theory to explore the impact of patent pools on innovation. Our results show that the pool's influence on the dominant design depends on the technical characteristics of both the patent pool and the licensor. We found an inverted U-shaped relationship between the age of the patent pool and the dominant design. The difficulty of technology development and the number of licensors in the pool actively moderate the relationship between the age of the patent pool and the dominant design. Our research also found that when licensors are vertically integrated, the dominant patent pool design increases as the pool grows.

<b>The Crossroad between Intellectual Property and Clinical Trials: Balancing Incentives for Innovation w</b>ith Access to Healthcare

The interplay between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and clinical trials presents a complex challenge in the realm of healthcare innovation. This paper examines the critical role of IPRs, particularly patents, in incentivizing pharmaceutical research and development while simultaneously addressing their implications for access to essential medicines, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We explore the phases of clinical trials that underpin medical advancements and highlight the significant financial and temporal investments required for drug development. The discussion also delves into the tensions created by monopolistic pricing, data exclusivity, and evergreening practices that hinder equitable access to healthcare. Through a review of international agreements like the TRIPS Agreement and case studies on HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C treatments, and COVID-19 vaccines, we illustrate the urgent need for policy reforms and alternative incentive models, including prize funds, patent pools, and tiered pricing strategies. Our findings underscore the necessity for a balanced approach that fosters innovation while ensuring that life-saving medications are accessible to all populations. Ultimately, this paper calls for collaborative efforts among governments, international organizations, and the private sector to create an equitable healthcare landscape that prioritizes public health needs without stifling innovation.

The paradox of government-funded innovation in weakly institutionalized environments

Government intention to spur innovation can result in the proliferation of low-quality patents, which is especially pronounced in countries with a low level of government accountability. This study examines the paradoxical effects of government-funded innovation in weakly institutionalized environments. I offer a game-theoretic model, in which the government has a stake in technological development and invests in research and development, although this encourages the growth of low-quality patents. Using Russian patents data between 1998 and 2016, I illustrate this mechanism by demonstrating the causal impact of Russia's government policy, which resulted in a simultaneous increase in the number of patents and a decrease in the absolute number of high-quality patents in the patent pool. This study provides a theoretical background for evaluating the impact of political incentives for investing in the creation of new technologies in the technological development of countries.

Analysis of patent innovation evolution and layout characteristics of global new textile materials technologies

Abstract Vigorously developing new textile material technology is critical to improving the textile industry's high-tech level, upgrading its transformation, promoting high-quality development of the real economy, and enhancing the country's overall power. This paper analyzes patent technology to explore new textile material technology layout characteristics and evolution trends for the strategic basis of industrial transformation and development on a global scale. The research took new textile material technology patents as the research object, constructed 76,373 invention application patent data pools in China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, and analysed new textile material technology structural characteristics and their evolution trend from three aspects of patent structure, layout characteristics and evolutions. As a result, it was found that the development plans and target focuses of textile new material technology vary from country to country. Global enterprises in garments, advanced material production, and chemical materials, represented by DuPont, 3M, and Dow Global Technologies, provide an important guarantee for the United States in maintaining its global leadership position in the development of the new textile material industry. Japan pays more attention to the practicality of new materials and considers the coordinated development of the environment and resources. Europe and South Korea focus on the construction of industrial clusters with their own characteristics, establish and improve the industrial standardization system based on core technology and core manufacturing, and maintain global competitiveness in textile new material technology. After 2009, the number of patent applications for new textile material technology in China exceeded that of Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea, becoming a global patent power. However, there is still a huge gap between the quality of patents and the layout of new cutting-edge materials in China and those in developed countries such as the United States and Japan, which is the main problem that needs to be solved urgently in the future innovation and development of China's textile industry, technology planning and layout.

'Our project, your problem?' A case study of the WHO's mRNA technology transfer programme in South Africa.

In June 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) launched an mRNA technology transfer programme. With a South African consortium serving as the hub, the programme aimed to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in view of the "vaccine apartheid" that was observed during COVID-19. Following Clarke's "situational analysis," the present study assessed whether the mRNA programme differs from the approach and practices that comprise current biopharmaceutical production. Numerous documentary sources, including legal agreements underpinning the programme, funding agreements, and patent filings, were reviewed. Semi-structured interviews with 35 individuals, ranging from the programme's architects and university scientists to representatives from LMIC vaccine manufacturers taking part in the programme were also conducted. While the mRNA programme may improve the sharing of knowledge, other design features, in particular, weak conditionalities around product affordability, participants' freedom to contract with third parties, and acceptance of market-based competition, are in line with the status quo. Further, WHO and MPP's tight control over the programme evokes the dynamics that are often in play in global health, to the detriment of empowering LMIC-based manufacturers to generate mRNA products in response to local health needs.

Lenacapavir to prevent HIV infection: current prices versus estimated costs of production.

Despite improvements in treatment and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access, 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2022. Six-monthly lenacapavir PrEP could benefit tens of millions of people at high risk of infection. However, prices are currently up to $44 819 per person per year (pppy). We projected minimum lenacapavir pricing based on generic mass production and a Cost-Plus (Cost+) model. Current active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and key starting materials (KSMs) costs were obtained from export databases. The routes of synthesis (ROS) were analysed to project a cost of goods (COGs). Formulation, vials and profit margin costs were included using standardized algorithms and Cost+ pricing. We estimated prices with scale-up to supply 1 million then 10 million treatment-years, comparing this with national list prices. The lenacapavir API is currently exported from India for $64 480/kg on 1 kg scale. Based on the ROS and KSMs, API COGs of $25 000/kg and $10 000/kg are achievable for a committed demand of 1 million (2 million tonnes/annum of API) and 10 million treatment-years, respectively. Including formulation steps, injectable lenacapavir could be mass produced for approximately $94 pppy for 1 million and $41 for 10 million treatment-years, if voluntary licences are in place and competition between generic suppliers substantially improves. Greater scale-up with improvements in manufacturers' ROS could reduce prices further. Currently lenacapavir costs $25 395-44 819 pppy. Lenacapavir could be mass produced for <$100 pppy at launch. Voluntary licensing and multiple suppliers are required to achieve these low prices. This mechanism is already in place for other antiretrovirals. To date, Gilead has not agreed lenacapavir voluntary licences with the Medicines Patent Pool.

Strategic management of intellectual property for technology as an object of civil law relations

Strategic management of intellectual property for technology as an object of civil law relations

Dynamic Effects of Patent Pools: Evidence from Inter-Generational Competition in the Optical Disc Industry

Dynamic Effects of Patent Pools: Evidence from Inter-Generational Competition in the Optical Disc Industry

Innovation incentives in technical standards

I study the incentives to develop complementary technologies and include them in a technical standard. I find that the standardization process may lead to insufficient or excessive innovation. Patent pools increase innovation incentives, while price caps may increase or decrease them. Although both policies increase user surplus and welfare, price caps dominate (are dominated by) patent pools if the incremental value of technologies is small (large). Preventing the coordination of price caps guarantees that the socially-optimal policy is implemented in equilibrium. However, from innovators' perspective, patent pools are more profitable than price caps. This finding helps explain why patent pools are more prevalent than price caps, even though price caps may imply higher welfare. Cooperative R&D agreements increase innovation and welfare when technologies are highly complementary. The paper's results contribute to the discussion of the effects of recent policy changes in the VITA and IEEE standard-setting organizations.

Intellectual property rights and fair vaccine distribution: A new perspective on the TRIPS Agreement

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequities concerning global vaccine distribution, as well as issues surrounding patents and intellectual property rights for these vaccines. This paper addresses the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) regarding vaccines. Adhered to by all state members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the agreement sets minimum regulatory standards for governments on intellectual property, including vaccines. Our contribution is a new analysis of TRIPS Art. 31 Bis concerning flexibilities in its terms of use on global vaccine distribution. We consider existing solutions for fairer vaccine distribution, such as governments enforcing a compulsory vaccine licence, and governmental/individual charitable efforts. We then focus on issues with know-how distribution and access to knowledge in the TRIPS context. We conclude that the enhanced provisions of TRIPS are ill-suited to global pandemics. To ensure fairer global vaccine distribution, we argue that patent pools and further TRIPS amendments are needed to endow less and least-developed countries with the ability to implement government-use compulsory licenses and to negotiate compensation terms later under judicial review. Further, to enable countries lacking the technical manufacturing capabilities to produce vaccines under license, TRIPS needs to be amended to permit technology and know-how transfer (Holder, 2023).

Patent Pools to Facilitate Licensing of Standard-Essential Patents in the Internet of Things

Patent Pools to Facilitate Licensing of Standard-Essential Patents in the Internet of Things

Exploring a Patent's Essentiality to the HEVC Standard: A Retrospective View

In this article we proposes a method to quantitatively explore a patent&#x0027;s essentiality to a standard based on a given set of already claimed standard-essential patents (SEPs). The method begins by creating an expanded patent set through a citation-based process and then clustering the expanded patent set into groups within which patents have similar technologies. It then applies main path analysis to a selected technology group to uncover a critical potential SEP within the selected technology area. To demonstrate the proposed method, we take the case of SEPs related to the high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard, utilizing the given SEP data from the HEVC patent pool of MPEG LA and use patent data in the ITU declaration database to verify the results of the proposed method, which show that our method is able to explore a patent&#x0027;s essentiality. In practice, four contingent analyses can be conducted to further confirm the results: main path analysis upon each group, branch analysis on specific patents, supplementary patent information analysis, and claim analysis on critical potential SEPs. The proposed method can assist practitioners who are developing future standards or who are trying to identify SEPs for the purpose of business strategy and patent deployment.

A Business Strategy Framework for Patent Pooling in the Solar Cell Supply Chain

In the green energy sector, which includes the solar cell industry, effectively combining the patents of various manufacturers within the supply chain to collectively create sustainable patent market value is of paramount importance. This study aimed to establish a business strategy framework for project-based licensing through the analysis of solar cell patents and the integration of supply chain manufacturers’ patents, with the goal of collectively creating market value for patents in a sustainable manner. The research methodology included analysis of the literature and focus group discussions. The study began with an analysis of solar cell industry patents from the past decade using the WIPS Global Patent database to identify projects with the highest patent count. Subsequently, through the use of focus group discussions, the feasibility of a patent pool strategy within the supply chain was explored. Finally, a strategy framework was proposed for project-based patent pool licensing, focusing on the top 15 projects with the highest count of 5579 patents. The results indicate that adopting this strategy framework for supply chain manufacturer patents can result in higher commercial patent value.

Standards Essential Patents for new technologies

The practice of innovative activity in Ukraine indicates low implementation of inventions. In cases where the invention is made to the order of a business, it really works and provides a certain benefit in the economy of the enterprise and the country. But most of the developments brought to the stage of protection are developed by individuals and institutions of higher education, which do not have an effective mechanism for their commercialization within Ukraine, and not all reach the markets of other countries. Patent owners do not always understand the procedures for converting their patents into SEPs in order to apply them in standards and further licensing (with the possibility of even issuing a worldwide license). The purpose and objectives of the study are to define the essence of SEP, to analyze the policies of individual standardization organizations regarding SEP, tostudy the experience and approaches of the European Commission regarding SEP, to develop normative legal acts and to provide recommendations to SEP owners when converting their patents into SEP with the aim of applying them in standards and further licensing Thus, today in the field of SEP, the following process participants can be distinguished: standardization organizations, SEP owners, patent pool administrators (very often, but not always), users of the standard and consumers of the final product. Therefore, it becomes important for patent owners to find joint activities with standardization organizations to participate in the development of a standard to convert their patent into a SEP in order to use it in a specific regulatory document (standard). Clearly, transparent assessment procedures and reasonable (FRAND-wise) licensing conditions must be created for SEP identification, which is currently often a trial-and-error process. It should be noted that the processes related to SEP are not defined by the regulatory legal acts of Ukraine, despite the fact that they can be useful both for creative workers and institutions, as well as for product manufacturers and users of standards. At the same time, attention should be paid to obtaining educational competences by masters of universities in technical, economic and intellectual property matters, to which it is necessary to add competence in the field of standardization.

The renaissance of compulsory licenses (in the pharma sector)

This paper examines the function of compulsory licensing of themanufacture of pharmaceutical products. The COVID-19 pandemic haschallenged the pharmaceutical patents and the compulsory licenses in thepharmaceutical sector. In International law the TRIPS Agreement introduced aspecial possibility to use the subject matter of a patent without the authorizationof the right holder. The development of this license was determined by thepublic health problems of the least-developed countries (hereinafter referred toas the LDCs). Today the global pandemic has challenged this system. Somedeveloping countries proposed that the World Trade Organization temporarilyshall waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines. The legislationof some countries allowed the governance to order the limitations of patents,but such a solution could harm the legitimate interests of the patent owners. Theglobal need for rapid treatment of COVID-19 showed that patentees cannotmake pharmaceutical inventions sufficiently available on the market. There areother solutions like patent pools, by which patent owners could keep control ofthe use of their inventions and the patents would be still available for thirdparties. This would serve the general public interest, but it is a money and timeconsuming, long-distance cooperation. The broadened use of compulsorylicensing could also expand vaccine manufacturing within the patent system.Hungary has chosen this path and the new legislation means the renaissance ofcompulsory licenses.

Do repeated alliances within patent pools encourage enterprise innovation? Evidence from MPEG LA

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate whether repeated alliances between two members of a patent pool boost enterprise innovation. Furthermore, this paper intends to determine whether the innovation performance becomes higher or lower based on the partnership characteristics.Design/methodology/approachIn this empirical study, hierarchical regression is used to analyze the longitudinal data obtained from 12 patent pools managed by MPEG LA during a time period ranging from 2006 to 2018. The members of patent pools comprise research institutions, firms and universities. Research analyses are performed based on a sample of 68,400 member pairs who had established repeated alliances. The information regarding such pairs is gathered from public databases.FindingsRepeated alliances positively correlate with enterprise innovation performance in patent pools; this performance is higher when the two enterprises have exploratory collaborations. Conversely, the performance is lower when the partners have a similar technology base and are engaged in a technological competition (competitive learning and patent litigation). Moreover, the performance is lower when one partner demonstrates higher network centrality and richer structural holes than the other partner.Originality/valuePatent pools play an instrumental role in eliminating patent-licensing barriers, thereby allowing mutual acquisition of complementary technologies, and cooperatively strengthening technology development. From the perspective of theories of coopetition, knowledge management and social network, this study explores the impact of patent pools on enterprise innovation performance and ascertains the moderating roles of technology coopetition, technology similarity and network position, thereby expanding the scope of innovation effect in the context of patent pools.

Classroom experiments on technology licensing: Royalty stacking, cross-licensing, and patent pools

The authors present two classroom experiments on technology licensing. The first classroom experiment introduces the concept of royalty stacking. Students learn that noncooperative pricing of royalties for complementary intellectual property rights leads to a double-marginalization effect. Cooperation solves the problem and is welfare-improving. The second classroom experiment introduces students to cross-licensing. It shows that reciprocal royalty payments dampen competition. The classroom experiments stimulate discussions of technology licensing, intellectual property rights, different royalty structures, patent pools, and technology standards. The authors present the experimental procedures and suggest routes for the discussion.

Patent pools and innovation‐based approach in global healthcare crisis

AbstractDuring the COVID 2019 pandemic, the healthcare sector faced major jurisprudential questions about the intellectual property system. During this period, the world was in the midst of a healthcare crisis, wherein the debate between the reward for innovation versus accessibility to all at equitable rates have become intense. In a such challenging scenario, the scientific community were dedicated toward the research while the healthcare industry was indulging in arguments over the incentives on creation. In this paper, the authors, as IP researchers, argue that in a scenario where there is an intense dispute over innovation versus accessibility, probably patent pool can serve as a mechanism to handle the tussle. The authors have analyzed a few patent pool models that were chosen on the basis of the types of patents in the pool. Additionally, an attempt is made to scrutinize the laws governing patent pools in developed countries and developing countries. In doing so, the authors draw the benefits and limitations of the patent pools in healthcare. We follow a qualitative research methodology. The research is based on secondary data and has some limitations because of this.

Better Than a Compromise, a Third Way: Using Patent Pooling To Accelerate Access to Vaccines and Treatments Against COVID-19

Better Than a Compromise, a Third Way: Using Patent Pooling To Accelerate Access to Vaccines and Treatments Against COVID-19

Cabotegravir-Global Access to Long-Acting Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for HIV.

A novel injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis, cabotegravir, has greater efficacy and acceptability than oral tenofovir/emtricitabine for prevention of HIV infection. Cabotegravir is currently priced at $22 200 per year, >185 times higher than the $60-$119 estimated cost-effectiveness threshold for middle-income countries (MICs). Following civil society pressure, ViiV provided access to generic versions in 90 countries with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), including all African nations. However, several MICs outside Africa have rapidly growing HIV epidemics. We analyzed the ViiV-MPP deal to assess population covered and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. There were 38 countries excluded from the ViiV-MPP deal despite having a GDP per capita lower than the highest-earning African country. These countries include 2.4 billion people (30% global population), with an incidence of 122 000 (8%). For cabotegravir to have a significant impact on HIV infections, millions will need to be treated at affordable prices in a wide range of countries.