Final answer:
A Royalty agreement may prevent a licensee from not actively trying to sell a patented product. Intellectual property rights, like patents, offer exclusive rights for a period of 20 or 21 years, motivating research and development by allowing the inventor to gain monopoly profits.
Step-by-step explanation:
A Royalty agreement may prevent a licensee from just sitting on the rights and not trying to generate sales. This type of agreement generally includes terms that create an obligation for the licensee to make commercial use of the patent to generate royalties, which in turn incentivizes them to actively market and sell the product or technology. In contrast, options b), c), and d) do not serve the same purpose in terms of motivating the licensee to generate sales.
Intellectual property rights such as patents are designed to encourage the development and dissemination of new technologies by providing innovators with exclusive rights to their inventions for a limited time. This time period, referenced to as "a period of time" can vary by jurisdiction, but for pharmaceutical patents, it is often 20 or 21 years. After this period, the invention enters the public domain and can then be manufactured or sold by anyone.