The INDICARE project – the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe – has been set up to raise awareness about consumer and user issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions. One of the main goals of the INDICARE project is to contribute to the...

This study’s statistical analysis shows that patent quality and innovation in China deserve improvement, and an in-depth legal, management science, and economic analysis in the study shows that various patent-related policies and practices actually hamper patent quality and innovation in...

China has a wide-range of patent-specific and other patent-related policies in-place, many of which are at least partially meant to stimulate patents and “indigenous innovation.” However, the analysis in this paper discusses how some of these policies in effect can actually discourage...

The specific characteristics of the R&D system of the modern molecular biotechnology lead to the fact that patent protection for genetic inventions cause almost simultaneously an useful information effect as well as a harmful blocking effect. Within this context, the present papers shows that...

Although China became the world's leading patent filer in 2011, patent quality is still a serious issue in the country. This article first provides a statistical snapshot of this situation and then discusses how China's network of patent-related policies and practices in certain cases actually...

After deriving a model describing the law of evolution of innovators and imitators the article focuses on their relationships under two different scenarios: prey-predator, in which innovators are regarded as preys, and competing species. Analytic results show that among the feasible equilibria...

This paper uncovers over 10 central level and over 150 provincial/municipal level patent targets, mostly to be met by 2015, within a wide range of Chinese policy documents. The analysis suggests there are weaknesses in certain targets due to the absence of important criteria for ensuring patent...

This chapter is concerned with the ‘new’ world of information technology and knowledge intensity. This is a world marked by big investments in R&D, different cost structures and significantly changed demand conditions. You should read this chapter in conjunction with Chapter 19, which deals...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the copyright protection of intellectual property under vertical relations. Vertical relations among author, manufacturer and retailer are considered. We develop several models, each with a different structure of vertical integration. R&D levels, total...

The paper examines the relationship between competition and economic growth, in the theoretical framework described by endogenous growth models, but with a specific interest in the policy implications. In this perspective, the key issue in the debate can be presented as follows: do competition...