Sustainable Technology eJournal最新文献

{"title":"The Valley of Death, the Technology Pork Barrel, and Public Support for Large Demonstration Projects","authors":"G. Nemet, Martina Kraus, Vera Zipperer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2818837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2818837","url":null,"abstract":"Moving non-incremental innovations from the pilot scale to full commercial scale raises questions about the need and implementation of public support. Heuristics from the literature put policy makers in a dilemma between addressing a market failure and acknowledging a government failure: incentives for private investments in large scale demonstrations are weak (the valley of death) but the track record of governance in large demonstration projects is poor (the technology pork barrel). We reassess these arguments in the literature, particularly as to how they apply to sup- porting demonstration projects for decarbonizing industry. Conditions for the valley of death exist with: low appropriability, large chunky investments, unproven reliability, and uncertain future markets. We build a data set of 511 demonstration projects in nine technology areas and code characteristics for each project, including timing, motivations, and scale. We argue that the literature and the results from the case studies have five main implications for policy makers in making decisions about demonstration support. Policy makers should consider: 1) prioritizing learning, 2) iterative upscaling, 3) private sector engagement, 4) broad knowledge dissemination, and 5) making demand pull robust.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131320246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quantum Energetic Evolution","authors":"Stephen I. Ternyik","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2774229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2774229","url":null,"abstract":"The quantum energetic evolution of the human economy, in historical and empirical terms, is explained from a sustainable point of view. A successful economic evolutionary path is always about the energetic adaptation of a social system into a thermodynamic gap (level) of dynamic energy efficiency, i.e. economic evolution is a thermodymanic selection procedure to find new ways of production and exchange via human ingenuity and physical macro-prudence. Economic evolution is bound to time (states and stages/time-inconsistent) while the laws of thermo-energetics are time-consistent.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125310447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ICT Access and Social Infrastructural Facilities and the Performance of Informal Micro- and Small-Business Enterprises in Nigeria","authors":"Ranti, K. Bolarinwa, K. Bowale, S. Oluwatobi, I. Ogunrinola","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2786205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2786205","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the roles that access to ICT and improved social infrastructure play on the performance levels of informal micro and small business enterprises in Nigerian. For formal sector organisations, studies have been conducted to verify this, but not much is known with respect to micro and small informal sector businesses. This study therefore intends to bridge this yawning gap by carrying out an analysis of the impact of the access to telephone (a major component of ICTs that is fast finding common usage among informal sector enterprise-owners) among informal micro and small businesses in Nigeria. The study relies on primary data on the informal sector enterprises collected by the Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research (NISER) in 2014. Basic descriptive statistics in addition to the Ordinary Least Squares Regression model is used in the analyses of the data. Policy measures that will enhance further diffusion of ICT infrastructure among micro and small business to enhance their growth and contributions to income and employment generation are recommended at the end of the paper.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"23 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114396587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shielded Innovation","authors":"Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun, S. Kominers","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2758841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2758841","url":null,"abstract":"We show that increased litigation risk has driven innovators to shield themselves by shifting innovation out of industry and into universities. We show both theoretically and empirically that litigation by non-practicing entities (NPEs) pushes innovation to spaces with reduced litigation threat. Innovation has shifted into universities (and away from public and private firms) in exactly those industries with the most aggressive NPE litigation, precisely following extensive NPE litigation. The extent of innovation shielding is large and significant. An increase of 100 NPE lawsuits in an industry shifts up the university share of innovation by roughly 70% in subsequent years (t=5.34).","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133401208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking Assignor Estoppel","authors":"Mark A. Lemley","doi":"10.31235/OSF.IO/AZGKH","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31235/OSF.IO/AZGKH","url":null,"abstract":"The Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have repeatedly emphasized the public interest in testing the validity of patents, weeding out patents that should not have been issued. But there is one important group of people the law systematically prevents from challenging bad patents. Curiously, it is the very group patent law is supposed to support: inventors themselves. The century-old doctrine of assignor estoppel precludes inventors who file patent applications from later challenging the validity or enforceability of the patents they receive. The stated rationale for assignor estoppel is that it would be unfair to allow the inventor to benefit from obtaining a patent and later change her tune and attack the patent when it benefits her to do so. The Supreme Court has traditionally disfavored the doctrine, reading it narrowly. But the Federal Circuit has expanded the doctrine in a variety of dimensions, and applied it even when the benefit to the inventor is illusory. Further, the doctrine misunderstands the role of inventor-employees in the modern world. More important, the expansive modern form of assignor estoppel interferes substantially with employee mobility. Inventors as a class are put under burdens that we apply to no other employee. If they start a company, or even go to work for an existing company in the same field, they will not be able to defend a patent suit from their old employer. The result is a sort of partial noncompete clause, one imposed without even the fiction of agreement and one that binds anyone the inventor comes in contact with after leaving the job. Abundant evidence suggests that noncompetes in general retard innovation and economic growth, and several states prohibit them outright, while all others limit them. But assignor estoppel is a federal law doctrine that overrides those state choices.It is time to rethink the doctrine of assignor estoppel. I describe the doctrine, its rationale, and how it has expanded dramatically in the past 25 years. I argue that the doctrine is out of touch with the realities of both modern inventing and modern patent law, and that it interferes with both the invalidation of bad patents and the goal of employee mobility. Should the Supreme Court take up the doctrine, it is unlikely to survive in its current form. Rather, it should – and will – return to its much more limited roots.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125671430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Patent Pools and Clearinghouses in the Life Sciences: Back to the Future","authors":"Geertrui Van Overwalle","doi":"10.4337/9781783479450.00026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783479450.00026","url":null,"abstract":"Patents in the life sciences sector have sparked considerable debate over the past years. The grant of a series of patents for the screening of breast cancer (BRCA) genes led to wide controversy in Europe, the US and Australia. The grant of patents for plants resulting from essentially biological processes, also spurred stormy disputes. Decisions on the scope of plant biotech patents equally fueled a legal battle. Last but not least, the grant of patents for human embryonic stem cells in the US, triggered fierce discussions in Europe.In the ongoing debate, concern has been expressed about the potential hindering effect on innovation of the continuous increase of patents in the life sciences. The academic debate on the possible discouraging impact of the proliferation of patents was set in motion by the seminal article from Heller and Eisenberg ‘Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anti-commons in Biomedical Research’ in 1998. Our past research aimed at contributing to the anti-commons debate in two ways. A first objective was to assess whether the prevailing assumption that an anti-commons problem was present in biomedical sciences held out in the field of human genetics. A second objective or our research was to explore solutions to the acclaimed anti-commons problem in the field of genetics. Rather than focusing on legislative (public ordering) measures, we explored to what extent collaborative licensing mechanisms (private ordering measures), such as patent pools and clearinghouses, could act as useful mechanisms to remedy possible adverse effects of fragmentation in the area of genetics.The present paper aims at re-visiting our former insights in a present-day context. First, we re-examine the patent proliferation phenomenon and related anti-commons problem by investigating the patent growth and re-assessing the existence of patent thickets in the life sciences. Second, and most importantly, we re-visit the collaborative license solution, by taking stock of new models and trends and by carrying out an in-depth analysis of operative models. We close by summarizing lessons learned from the past, which might be meaningful for (re-)writing the future.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126347570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contributors and Detractors: Ranking Countries’ Impact on Global Innovation","authors":"Stephen Ezell, A. Nager, R. Atkinson","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3066073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3066073","url":null,"abstract":"Robust innovation is essential for economic growth and social progress around the world. Until now, most studies of innovation policy looked at how nations’ policies affect innovation in their own country. This report assesses 56 countries — which comprise almost 90 percent of the global economy — on 27 factors reflecting the extent to which their economic and trade policies contribute to and detract from innovation globally. The report finds that on a per-capita basis, the nations doing the most for global innovation (a combination of more effort on policies that support innovation and less on policies that harm it) are Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, India, Indonesia, and Argentina score the lowest overall. Singapore, Korea, and Finland rank highest on how much their policies contribute to global innovation. In contrast, India, China, and Thailand have put in place policies that have done the most to harm global innovation. The United States ranks 10th overall, with policies that do little to detract from global innovation yet fall short of those of other nations when it comes to contributing to global innovation. China ranks 44th overall, principally because it fields so many policies that actively detract from the global innovation system. The report also finds a strong correlation between countries’ contributions to global innovation and their levels of innovation success, meaning that doing well domestically on innovation policy can also mean doing well for the world. The report concludes that for the world to maximize global innovation capacity, it will need to develop stronger mechanisms to encourage nations to do more contributing and less detracting.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116846291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Patent Pledges at the International Trade Commission","authors":"E. Winston","doi":"10.4337/9781785362491.00014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362491.00014","url":null,"abstract":"The United States International Trade Commission (“ITC”) investigates alleged trade violations of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (19 U.S.C. § 1337) including importation of products infringing patents. This paper seeks to explore the impact of voluntary public commitments made by patentees, limiting the enforcement and exploitation of their patents, on the role of the ITC in protecting domestic industry. The ITC exists to protect domestic industry, and not the patent. A patent pledge may preclude the seeking of injunctive relief, but that goes to the patent itself. Exclusion orders are an appropriate remedy for infringement of a patent subject to a patent pledge, unless the exclusion order is contrary to the public interest. An exclusion order is not an injunction, and can be not conclusively precluded by a patent pledge. The exclusion order is a statutory mandate that can be overcome only by evidence that the statutorily enumerated public interest factors are frustrated. The availability of an exclusion order remains critical to a continuing balance of encouraging contribution to standard setting bodies, while still allowing access to standards, preventing unfair competition and protecting our domestic industry.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128856352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"CAFC in Sightsound v. Apple Reaffirms the Board's Finality of Decision in Initiation of CBM or PGR Proceedings, and Their Reviewability of Whether a Patent Qualifies as CBM","authors":"Mary Fales","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2704034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2704034","url":null,"abstract":"In this case , Apple had previously petitioned the PTAB for covered business method (CBM) review of SightSound’s US 5,191,573 and US 5,966,440 patents. Moreover, even though Apple only asserted 102 rejections based on the CompuSonics art, the Board initiated 103 rejections on its own: SightSound argued the Board exceeded its jurisdiction. The Board reaffirmed its decision to self-initiate 103 grounds. SightSound appealed to the CAFC. The Court affirmed the Board’s findings except for a minor claim construction issue and its jurisdiction over which patents qualify as CBM.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129890160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Blockchains and Bitcoin: Regulatory Responses to Cryptocurrencies","authors":"A. Guadamuz, C. Marsden","doi":"10.5210/FM.V20I12.6198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5210/FM.V20I12.6198","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines Bitcoin from a legal and regulatory perspective, answering several important questions. We begin by explaining what Bitcoin is, and why it matters. We describe problems with Bitcoin as a method of implementing a cryptocurrency. This introduction to cryptocurrencies allows us eventually to ask the inevitable question: is it legal? What are the regulatory responses to the currency? Can it be regulated? We make clear why virtual currencies are of interest, how self-regulation has failed, and what useful lessons can be learned. Finally, we produce useful and semi-permanent findings into the usefulness of virtual currencies in general, blockchains as a means of mining currency, and the profundity of Bitcoin as compared with the development of block chain technologies. We conclude that though Bitcoin may be the equivalent of Second Life a decade later, so blockchains may be the equivalent of Web 2.0 social networks, a truly transformative social technology.","PeriodicalId":136014,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Technology eJournal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133528122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}