The enhancement of intellectual property rights (IPR) under the TRIPs agreement has to some degree been paralleled by an expansion of the literature on the optimal forms and roles of IPR systems. Economists have long concerned themselves (albeit with limited success) with such matters as optimal patent scope and duration. Public sector scientists have been particularly concerned with the effect...

The emerging global trends in intellectual property (IP) commercialization and intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement and harmonization such as technology globalization, "niching", and licensing strategies, the diffusion of IPR standards and the divergence of IPR enforcement practices, are components of an emerging view of the importance of intellectual capital in corporate and national...

Normative legal systems have struggled to define international property rights. This struggle has been particularly intense in the area of intellectual property because the level of protection afforded to trademarked goods varies tremendously from nation to nation.1 Thus, international trade often leads to infringement of domestic property rights. The tension between the global mobility of good...

We review the role of R&D in endogenous growth theory, and describe extant empirical research—macro and micro—bearing on R&D as an engine of growth. Taking R&D to be key while recognizing the significance of economic incentives emphasizes knowledge as an economic object and, more generally, the economics of intellectual property rights. This paper argues that property rights matter, but in subt...

The report issued by WHO’s Commission on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Public Health1 (CIPIH) makes a number of positive recommendations for improving health in developing countries. However, the report understates the value of intellectual property rights for promoting public health and overstates the importance of intellectual property in affecting access to health care. Indeed, the ...

This paper explores the contradictions inherent in one of the more popular buzzwords of today: sustainable development. I argue that despite claims of a paradigm shift, the sustainable development paradigm is based on an economistic, not ecological rationality. Discourses of sustainable development embody a view of nature specified by modern economic thought. One consequence of this discourse i...

This paper examines the determinants of commercialization strategy for start-up innovators. We examine whether the returns on innovation are earned through product market competition as opposed to cooperation with more established firms (either through licensing, strategic alliances or outright acquisition). Our key hypotheses are that the relative returns to cooperation are increasing in (a) t...

CI [1]'s work on Access to Knowledge (A2K [2]) is predicated upon the fact that intellectual property rights (IPRs) are a consumer issue, not just an issue for business. For example, the expansion of the scope and enforcement of intellectual property rights at the behest of rights holders impacts on consumers by inhibiting the sharing and development of culture, by denying consumers the freedom...

We develop a model to analyze one mechanism under which stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection may improve the ability of firms in developing countries to break into export markets. A Northern firm with a superior process technology chooses either exports or technology transfer through licensing as its mode of supplying the Southern market, based on local IPR policy. Given this ...

The objective of this chapter is to give an overview and analysis of the current trends and developments in biotechnology in aquaculture research and management. The technological developments along with structural changes in the aquaculture sector may affect access and intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes. These issues will be discussed in a wide perspective involving both short and long...