Intellectual Property Rights, Development, and Catch Up: An International Comparative Study

For most countries, economic development involves a process of "catching up" with leading countries at the time. This is never achieved solely by physical assets and labour alone: also needed are the accumulation of technological capabilities, educational attainment, entrepreneurship, and the development of the necessary institutional infrastructure. One element of this infrastructure is the regime of intellectual property rights (IPR), particularly patents. Patents may promote innovation and catch up, and they may foster formal technology transfer. Yet they may also prove to be barriers for developing countries that intend to acquire technologies through imitation and reverse engineering. The current move to harmonize the IPR system internationally, such as the TRIPS agreement, may thus have unexpected consequences for developing countries.

This book explores these issues through an in depth study of eleven countries ranging from early developers (the USA, the Nordic Countries, and Japan), and Post-World War II countries (Korea, Taiwan, Israel) to more recent emerging economies (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, and Thailand).

With contributions from international experts on innovation systems, this book will be an invaluable resource for academics and policymakers in the fields of economic development, innovation studies and intellectual property laws.

Hiroyuki Odagiri studied at Kyoto University (B.A.), Osaka University (M.A.) and Northwestern University (Ph.D.) and, since 1998, has been teaching at the Department of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Japan. His fields of specialization are the theory of the firm, industrial organization, and economic studies of innovation. He has written numerous books and journal papers in English and Japanese. Among the books published in English are The Theory of Growth in a Corporate Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1981), which was awarded a Nikkei Award to Economic Literature in Japan; Growth through Competition, Competition through Growth (Oxford University Press, 1992); and Technology and Industrial Development in Japan (Oxford University Press, 1996, co-authored with A. Goto). His Japanese books include Economics of the Firm (Toyo Keizai, 2000), Modern Industrial Organization (Yuhikaku, 2001), and The Economics of Biotechnology (Toyo Keizai, 2006).


Professor Goto is a Commissioner of Fair Trade Commission of the Government of Japan, and an Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo. His expertise covers economics of competition policy and economics of innovation. Prior to joining the University of Tokyo, Professor Goto taught at Hitotsubashi University and Seikei University. In addition, he had held visiting positions at Yale University, Oxford University, Australian National University and the OECD. His major works include 'R&D Capital, Rate of Return on R&D Investment and Spillover of R&D in Japanese Manufacturing Industries' (Review of Economics and Statistics, with Kazuyuki Suzuki), Competition Policy in a Global Economy, (ed. with W. Comanor and L. Waverman, Routledge, 1996), Innovation in Japan, (ed. with H.Odagiri), Oxford University Press, 1997, and 'Japan's National Innovation System: Current Status and Problems', (Oxford Review of Economic Policy).


Atsushi Sunami is an Associate Professor and Director of the Science and Technology Program at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan. He is also Affiliated Fellow of National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), a co-director of the Japan Research Center at Beijing University, and a deputy-director of the China Research Center of Japan Science and Technology Agency. He also serves on the advisory committee on international affairs for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. His research has concentrated on a comparative analysis of national innovation systems with particular focus on China and India, and an evolutionary approach in science and technology policy-making process. Along with Akira Goto and Tatsuo Tanaka, he translated An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change?, by Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter.


Richard R. Nelson is heads the program on Science, Technology, and Global Development, at the Columbia Earth Institute, and is George Blumenthal Professor of International and Public Affairs, Business, and Law, at Columbia, Emeritus, and Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester. His central interests have been in long-run economic change. Much of his research has been directed toward understanding technological change, how economic institutions and public policies influence the evolution of technology, and how technological change in turn induces institutional and economic change more broadly. His work has been both empirical and theoretical. With Sidney Winter, he has pioneered in trying to develop a way of economic theorizing that recognizes explicitly that the economy is almost always undergoing change, most of it unpredictable. His book with Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, is widely recognized as a landmark in this field.