Complex geopolitical debate surrounds the role of intellectual property (IP) in advancing and achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Summarising and advancing this discourse, this prescient Companion is a thorough examination of how IP law interacts, influences and impacts each of the seventeen SDGs.

This volume assembles papers commissioned by the National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) to inform judgments about the significant institutional and policy changes in the patent system made over the past two decades. The chapters fall into three areas. The first four chapters consider the determinants and effects of changes in patent "quality." Quality refers to whether patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) meet the statutory standards of patentability, including novelty, nonobviousness, and utility. The fifth and sixth chapters consider the growth in patent litigation, which may itself be a function of changes in the quality of contested patents. The final three chapters explore controversies associated with the extension of patents into new domains of technology, including biomedicine, software, and business methods.

The patenting and licensing of human genetic material and proteins represents an extension of intellectual property (IP) rights to naturally occurring biological material and scientific information, much of it well upstream of drugs and other disease therapies. This report concludes that IP restrictions rarely impose significant burdens on biomedical research, but there are reasons to be apprehensive about their future impact on scientific advances in this area. The report recommends 13 actions that policy-makers, courts, universities, and health and patent officials should take to prevent the increasingly complex web of IP protections from getting in the way of potential breakthroughs in genomic and proteomic research. It endorses the National Institutes of Health guidelines for technology licensing, data sharing, and research material exchanges and says that oversight of compliance should be strengthened. It recommends enactment of a statutory exception from infringement liability for research on a patented invention and raising the bar somewhat to qualify for a patent on upstream research discoveries in biotechnology. With respect to genetic diagnostic tests to detect patient mutations associated with certain diseases, the report urges patent holders to allow others to perform the tests for purposes of verifying the results.

The book presents an impressive line-up of experts in the increasingly relevant field of law and economics, an area that has particular relevance to the issue of IP rights. . . an excellent collection of cutting-edge research. . . an essential read for those interested in the economic impact of IPRs. . . a highly recommended collection. Andrés Guadamuz, Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice Intellectual property policy has been framed too commonly in terms of refining and strengthening legal rights. As intellectual property grows in scope and importance, the limitations of this narrow approach have become all too apparent. This important collection puts the policy problems in proper perspective by assembling the work of leading scholars and researchers who examine intellectual property rights in terms of how they actually work in legal, economic, and institutional contexts. Brian Kahin, University of Michigan and formerly White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, US For a long time we have thought about IPRs as a policy instrument to avoid a "tragedy of commons". The essays collected by Birgitte Andersen show that in the XXI century economy there is another, and so far underestimated, danger: a sort of "tragedy of markets" where every knowledge or cultural expression becomes privatised. This will generate a greater knowledge and culture divide, with an increased corporate dominance. Those who are afraid of the dangers of exclusion and believe that open access to science, technology and culture will lead us in a more intriguing world will find convincing arguments and explanations in this volume. Daniele Archibugi, Italian National Research Council, Italy There is a growing need to understand the role of the regulation of intellectual property rights (IPRs), in order not only to achieve economic performance, growth and sustainable development at corporate, sectoral and global levels, but also to provide a higher quality of life for communities worldwide. Intellectual Property Rights is cutting edge in addressing current debates affecting businesses, industry sectors and society today, and in focusing not only on the enabling welfare effects of IPR systems, but also on some of the possible adverse effects of IPR systems. The main areas covered in the book are: the global commons in an era of corporate dominance and privatisation of the public domain, including science, culture, and healthcare under TRIPS the rationales for IPRs, and the importance of an appropriate design of an IPR regime in achieving its objectives opening the black box of IPR offices and critically reviewing how they affect economic performance in both theory and practice coordinating the institutions (state versus sector institutions, knowledge networks, innovation systems) creating and extracting financial and non-financial value from patents and copyrights. This book challenges the existing mainstream thinking and analytical frameworks dominating the theoretical literature on IPRs within economics, management, politics, law and regulation theory. It is relevant for policymakers, business analysts, industrial and business economists, researchers and students.

This book examines the effects of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), namely patents and copyrights, on innovation and technical change in information technologies. It provides new insights on the links between markets, technologies and legislation by applying a variety of empirical and analytical methods. The book also explores the success of the Open Source movement to establish an alternative regime for IPRs by illuminating the rationale behind it and illustrating how Open Source can strategically be used by firms.

The fields of intellectual property have broadened and deepened in so many ways that commentators struggle to keep up with the ceaseless rush of developments and hot topics. Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property is a series that is designed to help authors escape this rush. It creates a forum for authors who wish to more deeply question, investigate and reflect upon the evolving themes and principles of the discipline.