Effectiveness of Intellectual Property Regimes: 2006-2011

The analysis and implications of copyright provide the foundation for copyright economics, where an array of different streams of thought coexist feeding a number of controversies that at the same time both hinder and enrich the research agenda. One of the keenest debates concerns the relation between copyright and competition policy. The goal of the current work is to explore to what extent competition policy determines the level of protection afforded to copyright. The paper also analyses the effect of other variables such as education, innovation, culture and national wealth. Panel data techniques are applied for a sample of eight countries over the period 2006 to 2011. Findings show that copyright protection is more intense in countries which have more effective competition policy laws, and which perform better in education, innovation and wealth. The link with regard to spending on culture does not prove significant, opening up a range of hypotheses for formulating cultural policy goals and instruments. In terms of countries, those in the Mediterranean area display the weakest regimes for protecting intellectual property.