INNOVATION, GOVERNANCE AND WHAT?

Innovation, governance .. and what?

Intellectual Property Rights: Innovation, Governance and the Institutional Environment is another new IP book published by Edward Elgar. Edited by Birgitte Andersen (Reader in the Economics and Management of Innovation, School, Birkbeck College, London), this book bucks the trend by containing a smaller number of longer essays rather than the larger number of smaller ones.

What the publisher says:

"There is a growing need to understand the role of the regulation of intellectual property rights (IPRs), in order not only to achieve economic performance, growth and sustainable development at corporate, sectoral and global levels, but also to provide a higher quality of life for communities worldwide.

Intellectual Property Rights is cutting edge in addressing current debates affecting businesses, industry sectors and society today, and in focusing not only on the enabling welfare effects of IPR systems, but also on some of the possible adverse effects of IPR systems. [...]

Druids convening to discuss intellectual property rights

This book challenges the existing mainstream thinking and analytical frameworks dominating the theoretical literature on IPRs within economics, management, politics, law and regulation theory. It is relevant for policymakers, business analysts, industrial and business economists, researchers and students".

What the IPKat says: Having found the title of this book a little frightening, I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading it. The focal point for the content is the 2003 DRUID conference ('DRUID' in this context being the Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics), where a round table reviewed the belief systems underpinning intellectual property rights and their increased enforcement. There's always a problem when this topic comes up: the IP-dependent business community (and those, including government who depend on its wealth-creation) looks forward and is based on a combination of moral propositions and belief, while the IPR research community looks backwards -- to where the facts are -- and is often more comfortable with description and explanation than with prescription and prediction. This book helps the reader bridge the gap and can be firmly recommended for anyone interested in patents but who doesn't want to start reading from the fourteenth century onwards.

Bibliographical details: ISBNs 1 84542 269 4 and 13 978 1 84542 269 1. Hardback, xiii + 359 pages. Available from the publisher's website at the reduced price of £ 71.96. Rupture factor: no substantial risk. Must-read bit: the editor's "If 'intellectual property rights' is the answer, what is the question? Revisiting the patent controversies", which the IPKat missed when it first came out in Economics of Innovation and New Technology. Says the IPKat, it's a short-cut to sorting out the issues without having to plough through a lot of ancient (and in some cases doubtful) theory.