Intellectual Property for Economic Development

Protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) serves a dual role in economic development. While it promotes innovation by providing legal protection of inventions, it may retard catch-up and learning by restricting the diffusion of innovations. Does stronger IPR protection in a developing country encourage technology development in or technology transfer to that country? This book aims to address the issue, covering diverse forms of IPRs, varied actors in innovation, and multiple case studies from Asia and Latin America. IPRs and their interaction with other factors such as such as the quality of knowledge institutions (e.g. academia, public research institutes or industrial research centres such as science parks), availability of trained human capital, and networks for research collaboration or interaction (e.g. university-industry research collaboration or international collaboration) in a development context, is the subject of this book.

Intellectual Property for Economic Development:

• Considers the diverse forms of IPRs and technology transfer and their implications for economic development.

• Analyzes the role of inventors in different contexts including those in universities and in domestic and international mobility and collaborations.

• Presents in-depth analyses of specific issues involving IPRs in the context of countries at different levels of development, including Mexico, China and Korea. Focus is paid to the differences between East Asia and Latin America.

This book will appeal to academics and researchers in the areas of development economics, the economics of IP, law and economics and IP innovation.