Abstract
Unlike production, trade or finance, the study of intellectual property rights has not been central to the discipline of international political economy (IPE). Traditionally seen to fall under the purview of specialized lawyers, some economists and a handful of regulators, it has been only rather recently that more attention to their study is being afforded in the field. The term “intellectual property” (IP) itself entered common parlance only in the early 1980s as shorthand for a set of disparate legal entitlements, of which the most familiar are patents (protecting innovations), copyrights (protecting original forms of expression) and trademarks (protecting words and symbols identifying goods and services). While the concrete nature of these entitlements varies, all confer exclusive, often temporary, rights for the exploitation and commercialization of intangible assets, together constituting a framework that governs the terms of access, exploitation and circulation of technology, knowledge and information. Much of the belated attention to the governance of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the field of IPE has to do with the shift away from the mass production and consumption patterns of the Fordist era towards the so-called “knowledge economy” from the late 1970s onwards, accompanied by radical changes in the IPRs’ governance within key advanced economies and, since the 1995 WTO TRIPS agreement, globally. All economic systems have been knowledge-based to varying degrees and rudimentary forms of IP protection have existed at least since medieval times; what is specific about the transformations that have been unfolding since the late 1970s is the increasingly important role the generation and exploitation of knowledge plays in wealth creation, and the equally important role IPRs play in protecting the accumulated capabilities of certain agents in this process.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
(Anonymous, 17th century England)
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- 1.
WTO TRIPS stands for the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organization of 1994.
- 2.
Embedded liberalism refers to the post-war compromise whereby multilateralism, economic liberalism and the quest for domestic stability were coupled and conditioned by one another. For more, see Ruggie (1982), where the term was introduced.
- 3.
Taylorian logic refers to Taylorism, an approach to work organization that aims to improve economic efficiency, especially labour productivity, in the shop floor advocated by Frederick Taylor at the turn of the last century. It is often connected to Fordism and in the context used here implies the continued application of this logic in labour-intensive sectors in various parts of the world.
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Muzaka, V. (2016). Coming in from the Cold: Intellectual Property Rights as a Key International Political Economy Issue. In: Cafruny, A., Talani, L., Pozo Martin, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical International Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50018-2_15
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