"Cost-Sharing Agreements, Intellectual Property and Taxation – a Study on Law, Development and Sustainability"

Our intention in this paper is to show that development and profit do not necessarily have to be on the opposite side of natural and social environment. Our approach to cost-sharing agreements is an example of how governments and companies, when cooperating, are able to connect development and sustainability. These contracts are arrangements made by two or more parties to share the costs of production or development of intellectual property. They are used as an option to avoid aggressive taxes and to eliminate unnecessary costs to production, development and transference of technology, which, from our point of view, if related to sustainability can legitimate in even higher levels the use of this species of international contract. These agreements are examples of how the cooperation between private and public sectors on European and International levels in the areas of taxation can be helpful to finance the development of sustainable technologies. Following this idea, we try to answer the following questions: How do cost-sharing agreements work? Are they being used to develop “green” technology? Are they cutting, effectively, the costs of production and distribution of this technology? In addition, we try to demonstrate the legal system and the validity of this kind of international contracts by analysing the Tax legislation in EU member states.