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12.3.1 Voluntary Patent Transparency: The PINTO Database The PINTO database21 of the European Seed Association (ESA) discloses the patent status of many varieties approved for marketing in the EU. In September 2021, it shows 1021 varieties approved for marketing in the EU which are covered by one or uploads/IAM-article-July-5-2019.pdf. Accessed February 2, 2022. Also reviewed in Neville (2020). 17FRAND ¼ fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms, denote a voluntary licensing commitment that standards organizations often request from the owner of an intellectual property right (usually a patent) that is, or may become, essential to practice a technical standard. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing. Accessed February 2, 2022. 18An overview of collaborative licensing models in the genetics space can be found in “Gene Patents and Collaborative Licensing Models. Patent Pools, Clearinghouses, Open Source Models and Liability Regimes, Edited by G. van Overwalle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009). 19German term “Lizenzbereitschaftserklärung.” 20Kloppenburg assesses various Open-Source models in detail. Kloppenburg (2010), pp. 367–388. Available under: file:///C:/Users/micha/Downloads/ Impeding_Dispossession_Enabling_Repossession_Biolo.pdf. Accessed February 2, 2022. 21The Patent Information and Transparency On-line (“PINTO”) data base of the European Seed Association enables transparency which commercial plant varieties are covered by patents. Access under: http://pinto.euroseeds.eu/About/Home. Accessed February 2, 2022. 216 12 Current Solutions for Issues in Plant IPR Systems more patents (Sect. 1.6—Table 1.4). This is still a small number in comparison to the more than 60,000 varieties which are listed on the EU Common Catalogue.22

12.3.2 Patent Pools Corteva and the Broad Institute under the headlines of “democratic CRISPR Licensing” and “open innovation” announced to “join forces to enable democratic CRISPR licensing in agriculture” “to jointly provide non-exclusive licenses to CRISPR- Cas9 intellectual property under their respective control for use in commercial agricultural research and product development. Such foundational intellectual property (IP) for CRISPR-Cas9 technology will be freely available to universities and nonprofit organizations for academic research” (The Broad Inst. 2017). Corteva alleges that it “intends to enable others wanting to develop agricultural products using CRISPR through access to intellectual property, technology capabilities, infrastructure and scientific expertise” (Corteva 2018, 2021). The license seems to include several patent families and patents and patent applications from several parties including The Broad Inst., MIT, Harvard University, Rockefeller University, Editas Medicine, Inc., Iowa State University, Tokyo University, New York University, NY Genome Center, Vilnius University, University of California, University of Vienna, CARIBOU Biosciences, and Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. In principle such collective licensing could be seen as a patent pool. However, some typical elements for patent pools are missing and it is unclear whether the terms and conditions are compatible with the antitrust requirements for patent pools.23 The stated ambition to “enable others” and create openness seems to be only partially realized to date. While licenses to the CRISPR-Cas technology “are freely available to universities and nonprofit organizations for academic research” (The Broad Inst. 2017), licenses for a commercial use are only available under non-disclosed terms. Assuming that the terms are similar to the publicly available redacted version of a Cas-license agreement between The Broad Institute and the company Editas24 these conditions would likely not meet the 22The catalogues (status January 4, 2020) list about 28.760 agricultural and 28.800 vegetable species. Plant variety catalogues, databases & information systems: https://ec.europa.eu/food/ plant/plant_propagation_material/plant_variety_catalogues_databases_en. Catalogue for vegetable species: https://ec.europa.eu/food/sites/food/files/plant/docs/plant-variety-catalogues_vegetablespecies.pdf. Catalogue for agricultural species: https://ec.europa.eu/food/sites/food/files/plant/ docs/plant-variety-catalogues_agricultural-plant-species.pdf. Accessed February 2, 2022. 23While the joint license agreement of Corteva and the Broad institute is not public, it is likely that it is similar to the publicly accessible terms of the Broad license to Editas (Fn. 24). Problematic are the missing limitation to essential patents, the lack of equal treatment of licensees, the lack of transparency of conditions, the extension of royalties to products not covered by the patents, penalties for patent challenges, etc. 24Licenses to Editas including the right to grant sublicenses for the field of Agriculture: Amended and Restated Cas9-I License Agreement by and between PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF

Evans’s research is focussed in part on how knowledge is built, especially scientific knowledge. He is the founder and director of Knowledge Lab, also at the University of Chicago, which uses computational science and other tools to make inquiries that can’t be made by more traditional means. Evans and a co-author recently published an article in Nature which, following the analysis of tens of millions of papers and patents, suggested that the most cited and impactful work is produced by researchers working outside their disciplines—a physicist doing biology, to give one example. Evans also studies complex systems, focussing on what leads them to collapse. He likes, basically, to be surprised, and to be open to surprise. “It was important to Daniel and me that there be a sense of play in the course, that there be a level of comfort with uncertainty and ignorance and being wrong,” Evans told me. It’s hard to envision what the future will look like, he said, because “today just feels like it did yesterday. It doesn’t feel like it’s any different. But there’s the potential for really nonlinear negative outcomes.” “Nonlinear” was a word that became as familiar as toast while I was observing this class—the idea of little changes that, at some threshold, lead to tremendous, possibly catastrophic, shifts.

On the first day of class, Holz told a story that is famous among scientists, though accounts of it vary. About five years after the end of the Second World War, during a visit to Los Alamos, the physicist Enrico Fermi was walking to lunch with a few colleagues. Scientists there were trying to develop a hydrogen bomb, a weapon easily a hundred times more powerful than the atomic bombs that devastated Japan. One of the scientists brought up a New Yorker cartoon that showed aliens unloading Department of Sanitation trash cans from a spaceship. The conversation moved on to other topics. Then Fermi asked, “But where is everybody?” They all laughed; somehow everyone understood that he was talking about aliens. Surely there existed alien life that was sufficiently advanced to say hello, and yet humanity had received no such greeting. How could that be?

If you’ve ever had strep throat or a urinary tract infection (UTI), chances are your doctor prescribed an antibiotic and your symptoms quickly vanished. But what would happen if the medicine designed to stop bacterial infections like these stopped working?

That’s already a reality when it comes to a number of illnesses caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which have evolved to outlast exposure to the drugs developed to treat them.

314 Research handbook on intellectual property rights and inclusivity applicable are limited to the ones listed in Art. 14 Regulation 2100/94.50 In general, it concerns those species where traditionally the harvested material is used as propagating material (for instance fodder plants such as field peas and field beans, cereals such as oats, barley and rice, potatoes and oil and fibre plants), and hence not for plant species where this is not the case.

3.3 Breeders’ Exemption in the Patent System

At the End of Property needed instead of a substantivist or a constructivist notion of property value, as Fabian Muniesa (2011) has argued, is a pragmatist approach. Native trait patents like Broccoli or Tomatoes offer an intriguing test case for this. While they seem to unite a range of very different stakeholders in their opposition, the respective reasons and motives for opposing (or endorsing) them diverge. That some of these stakeholders do not have patents does not mean that there is no value in these patents for them; while some who hold a vast patent portfolio see it as a liability rather than an asset. As we will see, it is not quite clear what is ‘in’ a patent (Bowker, 1992; de Laet, 2000), but it is not any easier to say what is outside of it (Biagioli, 2019). The controversy over native trait patents is both political and cultural: the various parties to the controversy have diverging, sometimes opposite ideas about the value of such patents. And yet, these values are made commensurate time and again by patents themselves. Rewarding innovation According to mainstream economic theory, patents are the prize that is meant to make people enter the innovation race (Machlup, 1958; Callon, 1994; Landes and Posner 2003, pp 294–333). ‘Useful ideas, like crops, are generally the product of hard work, which must be rewarded in order to be encouraged’, Posner (1986, p 54) writes. In this kind of economic justification, the prospect of getting a patent serves as an incentive for people to invest into R&D. Patents are needed because there is a discrepancy between the costs of developing a product and the price that people are willing to pay for it. While this is true for a lot of goods for which there is no market, the market does not have to fail here, the justification goes: the divergence between costs and market prices can be overcome by a combination of discounting and artificial, temporally limited monopolies. Successful inventors will be able to sell innovative and useful products exclusively for the duration of a patent, thereby evading competition and receiving higher profits which will help them recoup their initial investments. Without patent protection, however, competitors would undercut prices and rob innovators of their income: unlike the latter, they do not have to bear the costs of the expensive and risky initial appropriation of the idea by laborious experimenting and subsequent development (Machlup, 1958, pp 77f; Callon, 1994).

For companies, the potential value of such patents thus lies in the possibility to recoup expenses that would otherwise be lost to the market. Hubert Kempf, for example, could protect the fungal resistance traits he painstakingly accumulated in his nurseries and varieties from competitors: although it would not make breeding his wheat any cheaper for himself, a patent would keep others from selling the same resistances at a lower price. Once the The Values of Patents 89 patent expires, however, this ‘legal fence’ would be pulled down and the traits would become freely available to everyone else. These are the social benefits (cheap access to technology after the patent) meant to outweigh the social costs (higher prices before expiration). In the absence of patent, the argument goes, plant breeders would sooner or later stop investing in trait development (Landes and Posner, 2003, pp 312f) since their competitors would have free access to expensive traits. In Michael Kock’s words, such an arrangement would amount to ‘killing the hen to get to the egg’ (Kock and Gould, 2014, p 98). Until 2016, Kock was Head of IP for Syngenta, the Swiss agrochemical and biotech giant. He argues that patent can promote trait development where PVP cannot. “It’s about preventing market failure”, Kock says, “about saying, how do I create sufficient incentives; especially in a field where seed reuse and easy propagation would otherwise lead to a rapid loss of value?”1 Kock sees an under-investment in trait breeding, especially as public plant science is increasingly abandoning this field in favour of more fundamental research. In Kock’s account, the value of patents lies in their function as a backstop that prevents the well of investments and plant traits from drying up. He thinks of patents less as a fence to keep others out than as a sheet pile that channels money and incentives where they are needed. This is a position shared by his fellow patent lawyer Olaf Malek, who defended the Tomatoes patent at the EPO.2 It is rare to find a patent lawyer who does not believe in the value of patents – after all, it is their job to write patent applications and get them granted. And yet, Kock has found himself at the other side of the court room. He has opposed the Broccoli patent at the EPO, leading the opposition as his company’s representative throughout the process of appeals. What would lead someone who advocates for patents in plant breeding, of all people, to object them in a landmark case? “Anyone, from the top of their head, would’ve said, this must not be granted!”3 For Kock, the problem is that the Broccoli application lacks what would make it valuable after the patent’s expiration: “That’s why … we said this thing is not reproducible. No deposit, no markers, no nothing. It’s not inventive either, the EPO could have killed this with ordinary patent law.”4

We work in a high risk field: less than 5% of drug discovery projects ever make it to market. We have to embrace failure. When projects or investments are killed, we should openly acknowledge it in the light of day, not bury the dead in the night, and celebrate the learnings that can be gleaned: as we did with both the Quartet Medicine and OnQity write-offs. Innovative cultures have to convey that its “ok to fail” and foster quality learning loops.

But it’s not ok to fail due to sloppy science or poor decision-making. Not asking the tough killer questions, or using the right controls and comparators, can lead to chasing false positives for too long – which is not acceptable. It’s just too easy to keep drug programs going, overhype the data to get the next dollop of funding, or play around but never truly test the science – simply because we can rather than we should. It’s incompetent not to do the killer experiments, and do them as well as possible. If you are waving your hands too much, maybe the science is too early. Try to invalidate the central biological hypothesis early, before mountains of capital put too much weight on the scales of judgement – leading to low stringency and poor decisions biased by the sunk cost fallacy and the practicalities of being “too big to fail”.

The biotechnology industry stands as a beacon of innovation, spearheading solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges in healthcare, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Yet, within its realm of groundbreaking advancements lies a tapestry of unique challenges, both present and looming on the horizon. Addressing these challenges demands strategic foresight and relentless innovation.

Current Challenges

Patent law in the United States is historically premised on advancing the interests of society. From the store of productive activity available to all, the government restricts some activities for a limited time in hopes this will redound to the benefit of all by incentivizing innovation1. The law thereby restricts competition, forgoing the concomitant advantages of the free market, but only during the patent period. After that time, the law expects that competition will enter, driving down prices and spurring new innovation. From this perspective, US patent law centers on the benefit to the public, with the inventor’s reward providing the vehicle for accomplishing this jurisprudential goal.

In the health care space, these incentives have resulted in extraordinary success stories, but the same incentives can also result in a range of undesirable consequences, including excessive development of similar (but not better) products (‘me-too drugs’), the focus on drugs for diseases that affect wealthy people and wealthy countries rather than diseases that disproportionately affect the poor and developing nations, and a lack of innovation for types of medicines that may return fewer profits, such as antibiotics2,3,4. Similarly, drug companies will not research the utility of a known (and hence unpatentable) chemical, since the ability to obtain patent protection is central to their business model5.

In this day and age, it is hard not to be inundated with panic-driven news about climate change. The media often paints a bleak picture of the existential crisis humans are supposedly facing regarding earth’s climate. News anchors often use talking points such as the “climate crisis,” “climate catastrophe,” and “climate emergency,” while also reporting on the scientific consensus that the earth is on the brink of a climactic disaster. Many political leaders and celebrities also advocate for the gloom-and-doom outlook suggesting humans are causing irreversible destruction to the earth.

At the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit, actor Leonardo DiCaprio made a speech on the “climate crisis” while claiming scientists were in agreement about increased environmental threats such as extreme weather events. He stated during his speech, “The time to answer humankind’s greatest challenge is now. We beg of you to face it with courage and honesty.”

Hurricane Florence dropped more than 30 inches of rain in some North Carolina coastal communities in September, killing at least 39 people, toppling trees, downing power lines, and causing extensive flood damage. Now that the waters have receded, hundreds of thousands of residents are left to rebuild or repair their homes and businesses and replace their destroyed belongings. For those living near hog farms, the cleanup will need to be even more extensive.

That’s because runoff from huge livestock operations can spread large amounts of fecal matter throughout the landscape—and with it the potential danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or superbugs.

Last May, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released a landmark report on the state of global biodiversity. Written by 145 authors from 50 countries, the report documented unprecedented rates of decline in natural ecosystems and species populations.

Since then, experts have been debating how much land or sea can be protected; how much degraded land can be restored; how many ecosystems can be retained; how many species can be saved from extinction. The focus of discussions to date has been on reducing the rate of biodiversity loss – and ultimately halting it.

The United States is committed to halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity globally. The global decline of nature represents an existential threat to livelihoods, food systems, and health. As countries meet in Montreal, Canada, at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United States reiterates its support for an ambitious and transformative Global Biodiversity Framework that enables biodiversity to thrive – and with it all life and livelihoods.

The United States is engaged globally and at home to support efforts to conserve, protect, connect, and restore nature, leading to healthy ecosystems, healthy people, and healthy economies. The United States has committed significant financial investment towards the first national conservation goal of conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, including the America the Beautiful Challenge – a $1 billion public-private partnership that offers a one-stop shop to support ecosystem restoration projects that invest in watershed restoration, resilience, equitable access to nature, workforce development, corridors and connectivity, and collaborative conservation, consistent with the America the Beautiful initiative. This initiative is a decade-long challenge to pursue a locally led and voluntary nationwide effort to conserve, connect, and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife upon which we all depend.

One of the consequences of war is disrupted food provision. The connection between conflict and hunger is indisputable when we look at today’s locations of the major global hunger emergencies: Rakhine in Myanmar, the Kasai Region in DR Congo, north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It is estimated that 80 percent of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) resources are deployed in conflict-affected areas. But what about the opposite relationship: does hunger cause violent conflicts?

PHOTO: Share the World’s Resources

Abstract: The subject matter eligibility doctrine initially existed as a means of limiting the scope of an inventor’s patent claim. Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has broadened the scope of the doctrine to invalidate patents that effectively recite a claim for processes or products that exist in nature. These recent decisions have led to confusion over what inventions qualify as patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit and commentators have implored the legislature to weigh in on the issue and establish clearer guidance for what constitutes patentable subject matter. Two proposed bills introduced in the House and Senate seek to clarify the doctrine by allowing for patents to be granted more broadly to inventions that incorporate biological materials and other routine scientific practices. This Note argues that neither proposed law adequately addresses the underlying policy concerns left unaddressed by the Supreme Court in their recent decisions regarding the patentability of biological materials and processes. Rather than adopt either proposed law, Congress should draft an exclusionary rule for patent eligibility that precludes inventors from claiming a genetic sequence that exists in nature within their patent claim. Such a rule would impose a necessary limit to the scope of patent claims that reinforces the original goals of the subject matter eligibility doctrine.

INTRODUCTION Interest in the biotechnology (“biotech”) industry has continually grown in recent years due to the rapid development of therapeutics spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.1 The biotech industry relies heavily on patent protection for the development of their therapeutics because of the number of regulatory hurdles pharmaceutical companies must overcome for federal approval.2 The importance of patents has led to inventors spending millions of dollars to pro- 1 See Annalee Armstrong, 10 Ways COVID-19 Rocked Biotech—Plus an Honorable Mention for Omicron, FIERCE BIOTECH (Apr. 4, 2022), https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/how-covid19-rocked-biotech [https://perma.cc/6JXR-GWFK] (explaining that the pandemic spurred the biotech industry to invest in and quickly develop therapeutics for COVID-19). 2 See Dan L. Burk & Mark A. Lemley, Policy Levers in Patent Law, 89 VA. L.REV. 1575, 1580, 1581–82 (2003) (noting that the biotech industry relies on patents to protect investment in new developments). 726 Boston College Law Review [Vol. 65:725 tect and enforce their patent rights.3 For example, Moderna continues to battle with other companies over the full patent rights to mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.4 Sales of the COVID-19 vaccine generated over thirty billion dollars in revenue for Pfizer in 2022 alone, creating an incentive for companies to dispute the rights over the vaccine.5 Unlike mechanical inventions, new drugs and therapeutics in the biotech industry rely on products of nature, such as DNA and proteins.6 DNA exists in all living organisms, including human beings, and acts as a code that directs cells to build proteins.7 DNA consists of nucleotides, or four unique building blocks that can be arranged into different sequences.8 Specific DNA sequences, known as genes, dictate different attributes about a person, ranging from a person’s physical appearance to their susceptibility to certain diseases.9 Living 3 See Carly Klein, The Complications Around Patenting Biotechnology, LABIOTECH (Oct. 5, 2020), https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/biotechnology-patents-intellectual-property/ [https://perma. cc/TX6X-QQQR] (highlighting that over ten million dollars has been spent in the ongoing dispute over patent rights to CRISPR technology). 4 See Aparajita Lath, COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Infringement? The Battle Between Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech Continues, BILL OF HEALTH (Jan. 12, 2023), https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/ 2023/01/12/covid-vaccine-patents-moderna-pfizer-biontech/ [https://perma.cc/R8HM-TFCJ] (summarizing the ongoing infringement claims and defenses in Moderna’s lawsuits over their COVID-19 patents). Because Moderna pledged not to enforce its patent rights for the duration of the pandemic, various biotech companies argue that Moderna cannot renege on their promise. See id. (highlighting that Moderna pledged not to enforce their patents). 5 See Spencer Kimball, The Covid Pandemic Drives Pfizer’s 2022 Revenue to a Record $100 Billion, CNBC (Jan. 31, 2023), https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/the-covid-pandemic-drives-pfizers2022-revenue-to-a-record-100-billion.html [https://perma.cc/FM76-A7M7] (noting that Pfizer generated billions of dollars in revenue from the COVID-19 vaccine); see also Leroy Leo, Moderna Meets

The Biden administration and Congress have recently made a series of commitments to support industries that are of high strategic importance. The Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act provide much-needed resources to bolster advances in green energy and increase our domestic supply of semiconductors – two critical long-term priorities.

Yet, there’s another significant challenge facing our innovation economy, one that often goes under reported. Abusive patent lawsuits against some of our most innovative companies are on the rise, forcing more and more successful businesses to delay hiring new workers, raising wages, and developing new products. Instead, they’re forced to spend money defending themselves against meritless accusations.

Innovation contributes to economic growth by creating new knowledge and increasing productivity in society (Arrow, 1962; Brown et al., 2009; Rivera-Batiz & Romer, 1991; Sorenson & Fleming, 2004). Intellectual property rights facilitate and increase firms’ incentives to innovate by providing formal legal protection against expropriation (Arora & Gambardella, 2010a, 2010b; Hu & Png, 2013; Levin et al., 1987). Over the past three decades, we have witnessed innovation-driven economic growth in developed economies like that of the United States (US), which is fueled by technological breakthroughs under the protection of the patent system. At the same time, observers have noted that patent litigations initiated by non-practicing entities (NPEs) have surged since the 2000s (Bessen & Meurer, 2013; Liang, 2010). NPEs, also commonly known as “patent trolls,” are firms that amass patents and build their portfolios to enforce their intellectual property rights and litigate against potential infringers but have little or no intention of further developing these patents.1 Therefore, NPEs often initiate patent infringement lawsuits with little or no genuine intent of developing or implementing their intellectual property rights. Their primary goal is to earn monetary profits through private remedies or out-of-court settlements (Cohen et al., 2016, 2019).

Recent studies have shown that NPEs harm the collective welfare of society and reduce firms’ research and development (R&D) investment. Bessen, Ford, and Meurer (2011) find that NPE litigations have cost defendants about half a trillion US dollars of wealth between 1990 and 2010. Cohen, Gurun, and Kominers (2016, 2019) find that firms reduce their innovation activities after being targeted by NPEs. Recent anecdotal evidence has also shown that NPEs may also hurt public health and downstream research by suing medical device testing companies that develop devices used in COVID19 testing.2 However, there is scant empirical evidence of the consequence of rising NPE litigation threats on firm innovation strategies and trajectories.

Recent Supreme Court cases such as Prometheus (Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U.S. ___,132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012)) and Myriad (Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 566 U.S. ___,132 S. Ct. 1794 (2012)) have brought to the forefront interest in the legal definition of patentable subject matter (35 U.S.C. §101). These cases emphasize the common law prohibition on patenting laws of nature, products of nature and abstract ideas. Although this prohibition is not set out in the utility patent statute, a version of the prohibition does appear in 35 U.S.C. §161 which is the most recent amendment to the U.S. plant patent statute:

Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedlings, other than a tuber propagated plant or a plant found in an uncultivated state, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

In my new book, “The Food Sharing Revolution: How Start-Ups, Pop-Ups, and Co-Ops are Changing the Way We Eat,” I look at sharing from a variety of angles — good, bad, and downright ugly. One example is the custom of seed sharing, which can be traced from indigenous societies and the earliest fall festivals that ultimately inspired American Thanksgiving.

For centuries, people in agrarian societies shared seeds to help each other subsist from year to year. Today, thanks to intellectual property rights and often well-intentioned laws, our ability to share seeds is restricted. Realizing this, food activists, garden enthusiasts, and community leaders are trying to make it easier by making seeds available through libraries. Surely there’s nothing controversial about that, right? Actually, there is.

For years Haribhai Devjibhai Patel has been growing cotton, peanuts and potatoes in the western Indian state of Gujarat. For years he and his family have used seedlings from one harvest to plant the next year's crops on his four acre field.

Last year he planted a new potato variety known as FC5. It was a decision that ultimately landed him in court, because the US company PepsiCo had already claimed the rights to that very same potato variety.

Alternative Patent Models for Fostering Innovation Patent Reward System

One potential solution to address the above-noted positive externalities involves the implementation of a patent prize system, also referred to as a “patent reward” (Mandel 2005). In this approach, a reward — often in the form of a monetary prize — is granted to the first individual who fulfills the predetermined criteria set by the government (Adler 2011, 12–13). Comparable to traditional patent systems, inventors “in a pure prize system” (Hemel and Ouellette 2019, 560) bear both the costs of development and the associated risks of potential failure (ibid., 560–61). The key distinction between patents and prizes, particularly in the context of incentivizing innovation, lies in how their values are determined (ibid.). While market forces establish the value of a patent, a non-market entity, such as the government, determines the value of a prize (ibid.). 10