Human development, including not just economic growth but also the capability for longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives, depends on innovation and creativity. While various economic, technological, social and other factors influence innovative and creative activity, intellectual property...

Accounts of the ‘copyright industries' suggest that strong intellectual property rights help creative firms. However, mounting evidence from sectors such as video game production and 3D printing indicate that business models based on open IP can also be profitable. This study investigates the...

Intellectual property rights are often justified by utilitarian theory. However, recent scholarship suggests that creativity thrives in some industries in the absence of intellectual property protection. These industries might be called IP's negative spaces. One such industry that has received...

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the burgeoning literature on the law and economics of intellectual property. It is organized around the two principal objectives of intellectual property law: promoting innovation and aesthetic creativity (focusing on patent, trade secret, and...

A central concern with digitisation in the cultural industries is that unauthorised, digital copying – which erodes copyright protection – will disrupt cultural supply. The empirical findings of this study suggest that this concern is not justified. In the German market for sound recordings,...

Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Traditionally patents are seen as the gold standard for intellectual property protection. But, in line with empirical findings that secrecy is considered more important for appropriating returns, recent theories predict that firms keep their most important inventions secret. This article...

This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...

Patent studies inform our understanding of innovation. Any study of patenting involves classifying patent data according to a chosen taxonomy. The literature has produced numerous taxonomies, which means patents are being classified differently across studies. This potential inconsistency is...

Policymakers all over the world claim: no innovation without protection. For more than a century, critics have objected that the case for intellectual property is far from clear. This paper uses a game theoretic model to organise the debate. It is possible to model innovation as a prisoner's...