2008/06 | LEM Working Paper Series | |
Technology and intellectual property: a taxonomy of contemporary markets for knowledge and their implications for development |
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Mario Cimoli and Annalisa Primi |
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Keywords | ||
intellectual property rights, patents, appropriability, markets for knowledge, developing countries
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JEL Classifications | ||
O10; O31; O34
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Abstract | ||
This paper aims to contribute to frame the IP for development debate
into a more extensive discussion on appropriability, within the
perspective of policies shaping scientific, technological and
production capabilities in the light of development theory. Through
the lenses of the paradigm based theory of innovation, the authors
first recognize that technological asymmetries and gaps between firms
and countries appear more as sticky features than as transitory stages
of (automatic) adjustment processes, thus reassessing the
appropriability ad disclosure function of patents. Then, the paper
presents a taxonomy of contemporary markets for knowledge, flagging
the existence of what we call derivative markets for
knowledge. Patents become to a certain extent liquid because they
loose the weight and the density of the technological component and
they can easily circulate in the market without having necessarily to
be entangled in any final artifact. Just as in derivative financial
markets, the value of patents is a function of expectations regarding
their uncertain potential future value. The paper concludes sketching
the implications for development focusing on two major issues: i) how
reassessing the role of IP through an evolutionary perspective affects
behavioral microfoundations of innovative conducts and ii) how
asymmetries in technological and production capacities between
countries mould patenting behavior and participation and exclusion in
the contemporary markets for knowledge.
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