IPD AI
Mario Cimoli
In recent years, Intellectual Property Rights – both in the form of patents and copyrights – have expanded in their coverage, the breadth and depth of protection, and the tightness of their enforcement. Moreover, for the first time in history, the IPR regime has become increasingly uniform at international level by means of the TRIPS agreement, irrespectively of the degrees of development of the various countries.
This volume, first, addresses from different angles the effects of IPR on the processes of innovation and innovation diffusion in general, and with respect to developing countries in particular. Contrary to a widespread view, there is very little evidence that the rates of innovation increase with the tightness of IPR even in developed countries. Conversely, in many circumstances, tight IPR represents an obstacle to imitation and innovation diffusion in developing countries.
What can policies do then? This is the second major theme of the book which offers several detailed discussions of possible policy measures even within the current TRIPS regime – including the exploitation of the waivers to IPR enforcement that it contains, various forms of development of ‘technological commons’, and non-patent rewards to innovators, such as prizes. Some drawbacks of the regimes, however, are unavoidable: hence the advocacy in many contributions to the book of deep reforms of the system in both developed and developing countries, including the non-patentability of scientific discoveries, the reduction of the depth and breadth of IPR patents, and the variability of the degrees of IPR protection according to the levels of a country’s development.
About the Editors
Jerome Reichman
Bunyan S. Womble Professor of Law
Duke Law School
Giovanni Dosi
Professor of Economics
Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa
Giovanni Dosi is Professor of Economics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester. His major research areas include economics of innovation and technological change, industrial organisation and industrial dynamics, theory of the firm and corporate governance, economic growth and development. Professor Dosi is Co-Director of the task forces on Industrial Policy and Intellectual Property Rights at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, New York; Continental Europen Editor of Industrial and Corporate Change, Research consultant for Italian and international public and private institutions, and Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sussex.
Keith Maskus
Professor and Department Chair
University of Colorado at Boulder
Mario Cimoli
Professor of Economics
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
M. Cimoli is Professor of Economics at the University of Venice (Ca’ Foscari) since 1992 and Economic Affair Officer at ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) of UNITED NATIONS since 1999. He obtained a DPhil at the SPRU (University of Sussex) and he has held a number of visiting appointments in different universities and institutions (University of Pisa, University Metropolitan of Mexico (UAM), University of Campinas, etc).
Ruth Okediji
Professor of Law
University of Minnesota
Joseph Stiglitz
Martin Guzman
José Antonio Ocampo