Antonelli, Cristiano --- "The Governance of Localized Technological Knowledge and the Evolution of Intellectual Property Rights" [2004] ELECD 116; in Colombatto, Enrico (ed), "The Elgar Companion to the Economics of Property Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to the Economics of Property Rights

Editor(s): Colombatto, Enrico

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840649949

Section: Chapter 19

Section Title: The Governance of Localized Technological Knowledge and the Evolution of Intellectual Property Rights

Author(s): Antonelli, Cristiano

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

19 The governance of localized technological
knowledge and the evolution of intellectual
property rights
Cristiano Antonelli*


Introduction
The economics of intellectual property rights has been characterized by an
evolution that parallels and reflects the major shifts in the economics of
technological knowledge that have occurred in recent years. This work pro-
vides an analysis of the effects of the changing foundations of the economics
of knowledge upon the assessment of the design and the characteristics of
intellectual property rights.
To do this, the chapter relies on a systemic approach to understanding the
mechanisms of the institutional set-up that are most conducive to foster the
rate of introduction of technological knowledge and hence technological
change. The systemic analysis of the interdependent and complementary
conditions of access and exclusion to the flows of technological interactions,
transactions, coordination and communication that are specifically designed
to organize the generation and the distribution of technological knowledge
provides the appropriate context into which the role of each mechanism and
specifically intellectual property rights can be assessed (Jaffe 2000, Nelson
and Sampat 2001).
Major changes occurred in the economic understanding of knowledge in
the second part of the twentieth century. Knowledge was first regarded as a
typical public good that markets and profit-seeking agents could not produce
in the appropriate quantities and with the appropriate characteristics. These
theoretical ingredients paved the way to the build-up of the infrastructure for
the public provision of knowledge. Consensus on the analysis of the public
good character of ...