processing of minerals and production of metals has increased greatly in recent years. as a result, the quantities of waste material and pollutants have also increased. in many cases technology has changed to cope with the problem. processes have been either modified to decrease emissions, or replaced by others that are less polluting even if at a higher cost. this paper briefly reviews example...

Not all industries face high patent discovery costs. Chemical patents are "indexable," meaning that relevant patents can be efficiently retrieved by chemical formula. As a result, discovery costs in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries are low, and inadvertent infringement by firms in these industries is rare. But many other patent categories are not indexable, and in some cases that make...