Intellectual property has rapidly become one of the most important, as well as most controversial, subjects in recent years amongst productive thinkers of many kinds all over the world. Scientific work and technological progress now depend largely on questions of who owns what, as do the success and profits of countless authors, artists, inventors, researchers and industrialists. Economic, legal and ethical issues play a central role in the increasingly complex balance between unilateral gains and universal benefits from the "knowledge society". Economics, Law and Intellectual Property explores the field in both depth and breadth through the latest views of leading experts in Europe and the United States. It provides a fundamental understanding of the problems and potential solutions, not only in doing practical business with ideas and innovations, but also on the level of institutions that influence such business. Addressing a range of readers from individual scholars to company managers and policy makers, it gives a unique perspective on current developments.

From the reviews:

"This book consists of some 20 papers given at a symposium which brought together expert researchers studying the interaction between economic, legal and technological changes in the field of intellectual property (IP). the editor has done a useful job . This is a book for economists and lawyers with an interest in IP law and as collection of essays on different facets of IP policy, students in these subjects will no doubt find it useful reading." (David Newton, World Patent Information, Vol. 26, 2004)

Inhalt
Prologue.- 1 Innovations and Intellectual Property Studies.- 2 E-Commerce: The Consumer, the Trade Mark and the Credit Card.- 3 Intellectual Property Scope.- 4 Markets for Technology and Corporate Strategy.- 5 New International Arrangements in Intellectual Property and Competition Law.- 6 R&D Information Flows and Patenting in Japan and the United States.- 7 Intellectual Property Rights and Academic Health Centers.- 8 Initial and Follow-on Pharmaceutical Inventions in Europe.- 9 On the Creation of Fundamental Knowledge: Finding the Right Balance Between the Public and Private Domains.- 10 Are we on our Way in the New Economy with Optimal Inventive Steps?.- 11 On Copyright and Patent Protection for Software and Databases: a Tale of Two Worlds.- 12 Exploring the Tail of Patented Invention Value Distributions.- 13 Unlocking the Potential of Intellectual Property.- 14 Economics of Patenting an Input Essential to Further Research.- 15 Is University Patenting Necessary or Sufficient to Make University Research Valuable Economically?.- 16 Patents as Structural Capital Towards Legal Constructionism.- 17 Information Tangibility.- 18 Copyright and Cultural Policy for the Creative Industries.- 19 Legal Protection of Innovative Technologies: Property or Policy?.- 20 Intellectual Property Rights in the World Economy.- 21 Summary and Reflections upon Further Developments.- Abbreviations.- Index of Subjects.