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Andersen, Birgitte --- "If ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ is the Answer, What is the Question? Revisiting the Patent Controversies" [2006] ELECD 368; in Andersen, Birgitte (ed), "Intellectual Property Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Intellectual Property Rights

Editor(s): Andersen, Birgitte

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422691

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: If ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ is the Answer, What is the Question? Revisiting the Patent Controversies

Author(s): Andersen, Birgitte

Number of pages: 39

Extract:

4. If `intellectual property rights' is
the answer, what is the question?
Revisiting the patent controversies*
Birgitte Andersen

ABSTRACT
A typology of the rationales for intellectual property rights (IPRs), primarily
in relation to patents, is developed. The focus is on natural rights and moral
rationales, economic incentive rationales, increased competition and `market
protection of entrepreneurial talent' rationales, and the economic rationales
of organizing science, technology and creativity. Whilst reviewing the
controversies surrounding IPR legislation, the importance of this typology
is justified. It will provide a good conceptual underpinning and analytical
framework for achieving a finer empirical understanding of the social and
economic effects of IPRs, and this understanding is urgently needed when
designing policy fostering the knowledge-driven techno-economic paradigm
in the twentieth first century.

Keywords: Intellectual property rights (IPRs), Patents, Rationales,
Typology, Policy


1 INTRODUCTION
Capturing value from intellectual capital and knowledge-based assets has
become the new mantra. The battles are not for control of raw materials,
but for the control of the most dynamic strategic asset, namely `productive
knowledge'. Finding ways in which institutions can help firms with
this increasingly important practice has become an explicit agenda for
many governments.
* Reproduced from Birgitte Andersen, (2004), "If Intellectual Property Rights" is the answer,
what is the question? Revisiting the patent controversies', Economics of Innovation and New
Technology, 13 (5), 417­42, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

109
110 The rationales for intellectual property rights revisited

Meetings in industry, national governments and international agencies
as well as ...