WHAT KIND OF INTELLECTUAL PROPFRTY REGIME IS MORE FAVORABLE TO INNOVATION: WITH OR WITHOUT A PATENT?

Abstract

Theoretically, the introduction of a patent system serves two purposes: to encourage firms to produce new knowledge and to disseminate information. However, economic practice has highlighted the dilemma between protection and diffusion. In addition, there has been criticism that patents constitute a handicap to research that would result from them and therefore hinder technological progress. Thus, some economists emphasize the preference of secrecy over the patent. Others go even further in criticizing the protection of intellectual property rights and propose the removal of such rights by promoting a world without patents. In this article we will analyze some ideas that do not see the patent as the most effective way to ensure protection, in exchange for a dissemination of knowledge. The authors who defend this position raise the questions: Patents an incentive or brake to innovation? The patent: is it not an unjustifiable property right?