Abstract

This book argues that the current international intellectual property rights regime, led by the World Trade Organization (WTO), has evolved over the past three decades toward overemphasizing private interests and seriously hampering public interests in access to knowledge and innovation diffusion. This approach concentrates on tangible and codified knowledge creation and diffusion in research and development (R&D) that can be protected via patents and other intellectual property rules and regulations. In terms of global policy initiatives, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the WTO in particular is mostly a conflict-resolution facility rather than a global governance body able to generate cooperation and steer international coordinated policy action. At the same time, rent extraction and profits streaming from legal hyperprotection have become pervasively important for firm strategies to compete in a globalized marketplace. “Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public Interest” offers a novel approach – knowledge governance – in order to move beyond the current regime.

This book argues that the current international intellectual property rights regime, led by the World Trade Organization (WTO), has evolved over the past three decades toward overemphasizing private interests and seriously hampering public interests in access to knowledge and innovation diffusion. While it is obvious that firm-level dynamics are changing – toward networks and peer production in technologically leading companies in the developed countries, and toward increasing integration into global and regional production and innovation networks in developing countries – academic discussions as well as policy disputes in the WTO and other international forums take place within a rather rigid and narrow perspective. This approach concentrates on tangible and codified knowledge creation and diffusion in research and development (R&D) that can be protected via patents and other intellectual property rules and regulations. In terms of global policy initiatives, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the WTO in particular is mostly a conflict-resolution facility rather than a global governance body able to generate cooperation and steer international coordinated policy action. At the same time, rent extraction and profits streaming from legal hyperprotection have become pervasively important for firm strategies to compete in a globalized marketplace.

Taking into account these structural changes, the new frontiers that have to be faced by industrial, technological, innovation and competition policies, as well as increasingly complex coordination problems rising among them, a major cluster of policy and institutional design challenges emerges. To address them, a new conceptual framework is necessary. This volume proposes “knowledge governance” as the adequate framework to meet this challenge. Knowledge governance is an analytical framework that embraces different forms of public governance mechanisms such as supervision, rulemaking, regulation, policy prescriptions and institutional coordination and applies them to the realms of knowledge production, diffusion and appropriation.

 “‘Knowledge Governance’ brings together fresh theoretical insights and new empirical evidence on an important challenge: how to design public policies and institutions to promote knowledge creation and diffusion to promote economic development. This collection of essays will be an important source of ideas for researchers and policymakers alike.” —Bhaven N. Sampat, Columbia University

Leonardo Burlamaqui is Program Officer at the Ford Foundation (New York and Rio de Janeiro) and Associate Professor of Political Economy at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ana Célia Castro is Professor at the Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Rainer Kattel is Professor of Innovation Policy and Technology Governance and head of the Department of Public Administration at the Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.