The pharmaceutical market is a billon euro industry and the competition on the market is highly intensive. Primarily there are two competitors on the market, partly the originators which provide the market with new drugs, and partly the generics which produce copies of the originators‟ drugs. The originators are able to be granted patent protection of the drug under the European patent system, provided that the drug fulfils the requirements for patentability. During the period of patent protection the generics are not able to produce copies of the drug, but once the duration of the patent has expired the generics are able start the production. Thus, in order to hinder the generics to make copies of the drug, the originators apply various patent strategies. This has been noted by the European Commission, which conducted a sector inquiry of the pharmaceutical market in 2009. The presentation of the competition within the market focused on the applied strategies by the originator and concluded that all measures will be taken to hinder restrictions on the competition. In conjunction, the General Court judged in a recent case that the originator AstraZeneca constituted an infringement of the competition law when their strategies were applied. The complexity of determine whether a strategy is lawful or not, is due to the interface between the intellectual property law and the EC competition law. This implies that the strategy can be lawful under the IP law but unlawful under the competition law. The Court has established that any strategy, regardless of its legality under the IP law, constitutes an infringement of the competition law if it might restrict the competition. The Courts do not provide sufficient guidelines of the conditions that constitute the infringement. Consequently, the strategies‟ legality is at present time uncertain.

This paper investigates how the size of a firm affects its licensing strategy for patented technologies through empirical analysis of the characteristics at the technological, firm, and industry levels. Only firms with commercialization capabilities are considered in this study in order to compare the incentives of utilizing technologies internally with the incentives of selling them for licensing revenue. Focusing on licensing motivated by non-strategic purposes, empirical analysis shows that large companies are less willing to license patents that fit into their business focus, as well as those which have a low technological value in general. On the other hand, small firms are more inclined to license patents which are more relevant to their business focus, but less innovative on average. This study also finds that market share and competition intensity are important factors in their licensing decisions: the more competitive and the smaller the market share of the patents owned by large firms, the higher the chance that firms will list them on the market. In line with the revenue versus competition framework by Arora and Fosfuri (2003), this paper concludes that large firms are generally more concerned about the rent dissipation effect over the revenue effect from licensing, while the opposite is true for smaller firms.

In this dissertation, I explore the effect of tax incentives on where U.S. multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities worldwide. Research and development (R&D) tax incentives offered by foreign countries and differences between U.S. and foreign tax rates provide opportunities that may influence where multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities. Using firm-level patenting data that identifies the country-specific location of innovations from 1986 to 2000, I examine the relation between innovative activities performed in a foreign country and these tax incentives using the Heckman (1979) two step estimation approach. I find evidence that the foreign percentage of innovative activities is associated with the attractiveness of foreign R&D tax incentives and with an increase in the effect of U.S. R&D allocation rules. In addition, the results suggest that firms in excess foreign tax credit positions decrease the amount of R&D activities in a foreign location with increased foreign tax rates, consistent with income shifting incentives. In contrast, I find that the firms in deficit foreign tax credit positions increase their foreign R&D activities with increasing foreign tax rates. This study is the first to examine and provide evidence of the influence of foreign R&D tax incentives and income shifting incentives on a U.S. multinational’s decision on where to locate R&D activities.

Since the implementation of Directive 2004/48 EC on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in Sweden there is today a possibility for pharmaceutical companies holding a patent to issue interim injunctions against a generic company on the grounds of an attempt or preparation to a pharmaceutical patent infringement. It has been shown that one of the earliest steps in which a generic company may infringe a pharmaceutical patent is to offer the generic drugs onto the market. However, since the implementation of the attempt and preparation rule in the Swedish Patent Act questions have been raised as to in what stage interim injunctions may be issued against an attempt or preparation to offer generic drugs onto the market made by generic companies. This thesis has therefore intent to investigate at what stage interim injunctions may be applied for against a generic company on the grounds of an attempt or preparation to offer generic drugs. In the thesis the writer argues that in order for an attempt or preparation to offer generic drugs to exist an overall assessment must be made of the particular situation and that there is no specific principles to follow in order to determine either an attempt or a preparation to offer generic drugs. However, some guidance might be brought from Danish case law in order to establish a preparation to offer generic drugs in Sweden.

Technological innovation is a key process for the modern enterprise to gain competitiveness. Technological innovation let United States companies become the leader of the world, and the well developed capital market is the source to promote technological innovation. Science and Technology is the goal of Japan. Japan learns from technology and innovation to become a technological power. But the financial structure is different from United States and Japan. The difference for supporting technological innovation is the subject of this research. The study found that stock market is the most important funding outside the banking system. The mature stock markets in the United States gave birth to the successful technological innovation of the modern enterprise. Whether it the patent application and the export of new products and technologies are the highest in the world. The stock market of Japan is not develop enough, it can¡¦t give enough support to technological innovation. But the tight relation between the companies and banks make up for the immaturity of the stock market. And the relation promotes the enterprises to obtain the outstanding achievements in technological innovation. Overall, the mature stock markets of United States support the development of technological innovation, and achieve a higher degree of technological innovation.

Hovedopgave. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Given the considerable advances in the field of biotechnology in the last decades, new issues of scientific, social, legal and ethical nature have been raised, particularly concerning inventions making use of living material, and their patentability. / Notwithstanding some reluctance at the outset, most of patent offices as well as courts and tribunals in the United States, Canada and Europe have finally accepted patentability of living organisms. Oppositions are however numerous and, more than a criticism towards the patent system itself, it is genetic engineering that is put into question. / Europe has recently regulated the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. Being a text of compromise, the Directive is already subject of controversies. The United States and Canada have not yet decided to explicitly legislate in this field. Some decisions taken in particular cases allow to determine the state of the question in these two countries. It is however not certain that they can be satisfied with an unregulated technology that raises so many moral questions. / The question of the foremost importance concerns the research branch, as well as the use that will be done with inventions emerging from the biotechnology industry. Patent law being unable to prevent technological creations, it is above all the utilisation of it that will allow to retain the most beneficial inventions for humankind and its environment.

The cost of medicines imposes a significant financial burden on society, with New Zealand spending $783.6 million between 2012 and 2013 alone. The majority of these costs are due to the monopoly prices charged for new patented drugs. The pharmaceutical industry argues that these high prices are necessary to recover the costs of drug development, which can exceed a billion dollars for a single drug. Because new medicines are relatively cheap to reverse-engineer and manufacture, in absence of a minimum period of exclusivity provided by patents, it is alleged that it would not be commercially viable to develop new medicines. Most criticisms of the patent system relate to the high prices charged for patented medicines. However, there is another issue which has received limited academic commentary to date, namely, whether the pharmaceutical industry’s reliance on patents means that otherwise socially valuable medical therapies are being screened out or ignored, and whether alternative incentive mechanisms are needed to address this problem. The aim of this thesis is to address this issue. First, the laws applicable to patentability and regulatory approval of new medicines will be discussed, with a focus on New Zealand and the United States. Second, evidence will be provided for the existence of three broad categories of medical therapies which lack private incentives for development under the current patent system: unpatentable therapies, unmonopolisable therapies and unprofitable therapies. Other problems with the reliance on patent monopolies will also be discussed. Third, the process of pharmaceutical reimbursement that is used to determine the price of medicines under the current system will be described, and a set of criteria will be proposed for an ideal incentive system, against which the current system is compared. Fourth, alternative incentive mechanisms for medical therapies comprising exclusivity-based ‘pull’ incentives, prize-based ‘pull’ incentives, and publicly funded ‘push’ incentives, will be analysed and ranked against these ideal criteria. This thesis concludes by proposing two legislative frameworks as part of an optimal incentive system alongside the current patent system, namely, extended regulatory exclusivity for incentivising unpatentable therapies and a prize-based mechanism combined with increased public funding for incentivising unmonopolisable and unprofitable therapies.

This thesis is a theoretical study of relationships between patent races and market structure. The outcome of a patent race can be an important determinant of market structure. For example, whether or not a new firm enters a market may depend upon its winning a patent race against an incumbent firm already in that market. Moreover, market structure can be a major influence upon competition in a patent race. In the example, the asymmetry between incumbent and potential entrant has an effect upon their respective incentives in the patent race. Chapter I discusses models of R and D with uncertainty. We show that, as the degree of correlation between the uncertainties facing rival firms increases, R and D efforts increase under some, but not all, conditions, and the number of active competitors falls. Chapter II discusses the approach of representing patent races as bidding games. We examine a model in which several incumbent firms compete with a number of potential entrants in a patent race, and ask whether the incumbents have an incentive to form a joint venture to deter entry. They do so if and only if the patent does not offer a major cost improvement. In Chapter III we examine the strategic interactions between competitors during the course of a race, in an attempt to clarify (for different types of race) the idea that a race degenerates when one player becomes 'far enough ahead' of his rivals, in a sense made precise. In Chapter IV we examine the evolution of market structure in a duopoly model when there is a sequence of patent races. The nature of competition in the product market is shown to determine whether one firm becomes increasingly dominant as industry leader, or whether there is 'action - reaction' between firms.

Thesis (M.S. in Management of Technology)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2004. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.