Patent Pledges as Portfolio Management Tools

Download or read book Patent Pledges as Portfolio Management Tools written by Jorge L. Contreras and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With increasing frequency, patent holders have made voluntary public commitments (pledges) to limit the enforcement of their patents without direct compensation. After introducing the background and market impact of patent pledges, this chapter focuses on the effect on patent pledges on the organizations that make them, both as tools of patent portfolio management and as binding organizational commitments. To further this analysis a new taxonomy of patent pledges is developed based on their legal structure: Type A (unilateral covenants), Type B (bilateral commitments) and Type C (public licenses). Following this structure, the conditions, if any, under which a potential pledge beneficiary may enforce the pledge obligation against the pledgor are explored through the lenses of legal theories including antitrust/competition, contract, license and promissory estoppel. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the legal remedies available to a party seeking to enforce a patent pledge against the pledgor, and applies this analysis to the recent case of Moderna's mRNA vaccine pledge and subsequent litigation against Pfizer and BioNTech.