Patents in the life sciences industries are a key form of intellectual property (IP), particularly for products such as brand-name drugs and medical devices. However, trade secrets can also be a useful tool for many types of innovations. In appropriate cases, trade secrets can offer long-term protection of IP for a lower financial cost than patenting. This type of protection must be approached ...

President Obama has discovered first-hand how difficult wrangling the interests of a dozen nations can be. For six years, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been in negotiations and might prove to be Obama’s crowning foreign policy achievement. If the 12-nation Free Trade Agreement (FTA) passes, it will shape the future of economic development in the Asia-Pacific and cement the U.S. as the...

The creation of the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has turned the right to emit CO2 into a positively priced intermediate good for the affected firms. Firms thus face the decision whether to source compliance with the EU ETS within their boundaries or to acquire it through the permit trade. However, a combination of internal abatement, free permit allocation and flexibility to shift the ...

Can something be both open and secret? That is the conundrum facing society as trade secret rights chafe against patent in cutting-edge, biologic medicine. The conflict unsurprising. Trade has emerged a relatively late bloomer among family of intellectual property only recently begun to establish boundaries its own space, process which it will inevitably knock other doctrines already occupying ...