We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation. We associate the strength of IPR protection with the...

No natural rights theory justifies strong intellectual property rights. More specifically, no theory within the entire domain of natural rights thinking – encompassing classical liberalism, libertarianism and left-libertarianism, in all their innumerable variants – coherently supports...

Scholars who point to political influences and the regulatory function of patent courts in the U.S. have long questioned the courts’ subjective interpretation of what ‘things’ can be claimed as inventions. The present article sheds light on a different but related facet: the role of the...