"Placing himself at the crossroads of economics, law, and sociology, Christian Bessy investigates the contemporary transformation of intellectual property rights (IPR). He demonstrates how entities previously considered inappropriate have now become the object of property rights by means of a...

We present a selective survey of the economic theory of intellectual property rights. After a brief description of the institutional framework, we discuss policy objectives and some basic welfare tradeoffs in intellectual property design. We consider the extent to which social objectives can be...