In “The right to good ideas: patents and the poor”, The Economist depicts two driving forces in the contemporary discourse on IP and globalization. The one is interested in advancing the knowledge economy, an approach based on the belief that knowledge is the driving factor behind economic...

This chapter reviews the options for effective public sector management of intellectual property (IP) in the life sciences, focusing on the need for a judicious, pragmatic choice of options along two axes: (1) deployment of exclusive rights over technology and (2) use of market mechanisms to...

Through the TRIPS Agreement, imitation as a development strategy has been ruled out and developing countries are left with two alternatives: To either buy expensive foreign technology, promote the transfer of technology or to develop their own technology. Any other approach to use technological...

This study analyzes underlying themes of the international policy discourse on Intellectual Property (IP) and in this sense raises awareness on common pitfalls currently associated with international policy making in the area of innovation. Methodologically it is situated within the domain of...