The authors investigate the impact of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection on economic growth in a panel of 79 countries using threshold regression analysis. We show that whilst the effect of IPR protection on growth depends upon the level of development, it is positively and significantly related to growth for low- and high-income countries, but not for middle-income countries.
The United States has used bilateral trade agreements to push small developing countries to accept IPR obligations that go far beyond the global requirements set out by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in its Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Some of these obligations are inconsistent with development needs and cause resentment of overall U.S. trade policy without much promise of spurring more innovation. This report provides suggestions to alleviate these problems.
This WIPO report provides an introduction and broad overview of copyright definitions, legislation and enforcement mechanisms for smaller businesses, start-up, researchers and entrepreneurs.
This report measures the rate of knowledge spillovers both into and out of university patents during two time frames during the 1980s. The authors conclude that the diversity of patents that are used to assist university patents have decreased by 50% over the years. The believe that since Bayh-Dole, private firms may be having more of an impact on university patenting.
Licensing a new technology implies introducing competition into the market. The authors hypothesize that the introduction of a competitor into the market may enhance demand, and consequently have a positive effect for the incumbent firm. They then show that an incumbent may decide to license a technology even in the absence of a royalty when the positive effect outweighs the negative one.
This paper assesses the impact of adopting a post-grant
review institution in the US patent system by comparing the opposition careers of European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of litigated US patents to those of a control group of EPO patents. Our results provide strong evidence that the United States could benefit substantially from adopting an administrative post-grant patent review, provided that the post-grant mechanism is not too costly.
This paper investigates how the mode of entry into a
foreign market can be influenced by the intensity of R&D in an industry and the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in a recipient country. It then analyzes the link between the IPR regime and policies that place limits on the degree of foreign ownership in a joint venture. The paper concludes that host countries never finds it optimal to fully protect IPRs and concede all bargaining power in a joint venture to the foreign firm.
This paper develops a dynamic duopoly model of R&D competition to improve the quality of a final good. The authors find that firms, ex ante, always prefer full patent protection. The welfare ranking of the two IPR regimes, on the other hand, depends on the relative magnitudes of the costs of initial innovation and improvements. In particular, a research exemption is most likely to provide inadequate R&D incentives when there is a large cost to establish the initial research program.
In this Kauffman-sponsored study, Stuart, Ding, and Fiona Murray of MITs Sloan School of Management reveal that male life scientists in academia secure patents at more than twice the rate of their female colleagues. The study suggests that women conduct equally significant research, but often find themselves left out of social networks that provide valuable access to the commercial sector. The authors conclude that additional networking groups could help foster greater connections between female researchers and the business community.
The paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as incentives for technological innovation. The authors start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of IPR in terms of "market failures" in knowledge generation. Such an approach we argue misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of non-market institutions in the innovation process.