Title: Costly R&D and intellectual property rights protection

Authors: Amy Jocelyn Glass

Addresses: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Ohio State University, 1945 North High Street, Columbus, OH 43210-1172, USA

Abstract: This paper summarises some of my product cycle models addressing the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection when all forms of R&D, including imitation, are costly. While the settings considered differ, the models all share the feature that a strengthening of IPR protection makes R&D more difficult, and thus causes firms to waste scarce resources ||reinventing the wheel||. Taking the perspective that stronger IPR protection increases the cost of R&D demonstrates how weak IPR protection can aid a country|s development by enabling its firms to make efficient use of scarce resources and thus further advance the country|s technology frontier.

Keywords: innovation; imitation; intellectual property rights; foreign direct investment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2000.002802

International Journal of Technology Management, 2000 Vol.19 No.1/2, pp.179-193

Published online: 07 Jul 2003 *

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