Negotiating intellectual property rights

between coercion and dialogue

Peter Drahos

pp. 161-182

in: Peter Drahos, Ruth Mayne (eds), Global intellectual property rights, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Abstract

Why did England in the seventeenth century begin a journey that would lead it to economic growth and empire while Spain began one that would lead to its economic contraction? One suggestion is that the long run performance of economies has much to do with efficiently defined property rights (North, 1990). Designed in the right way property rights will reduce negative externalities, allow for bargaining and avoid tragedies of the commons. Naturally, this gives rise to the question of how a society arrives at a set of efficient property rights. The economist, Douglass North (1990), suggests that it probably has something to do with democratic institutions.