There has been little understanding of how the existence and exercise of formal intellectual property rights (IPR) such as patents influence the direction of OSS innovation. This dissertation seeks to bridge this gap in prior literature by focusing on two closely related topics. First, it investigates how OSS adoption and production are influenced by IPR enforcement exercised by proprietary incumbents. It suggests that when an IPR enforcement action is filed, user interest and developer activity will be negatively affected in two types of related OSS projects--those that display technology overlap with the litigated OSS and business projects that are specific to a focal litigated platform. The empirical analyses based on data from SourceForge.net strongly support the hypotheses. Second, it examines the impact of royalty-free patent pools contributed by OSS-friendly incumbents on OSS product entry by start-up firms. It argues that increases in the size of the OSS patent pool related to a software segment will facilitate OSS entry by start-up firms into the same segment; further, the marginal effect of the pool on OSS entry will be especially large in software segments where the cumulativeness of innovation is high or where patent ownership in a segment is concentrated. These hypotheses are empirically tested through examining the impacts of a major OSS patent pool--the Patent Commons, established by IBM and a few others in 2005--on OSS entry by 2,054 start-up firms from 1999 to 2009. The empirical results largely support these hypotheses and are robust to adding a variety of controls as well as to GMM instrumental variables estimation.

China¡¦s behavior towards the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime is a reflection of the tug-of-war between regime and national interest. IPR, a concept foreign to Chinese culture, began to influence China following the reforms of 1978 through both external and internal pressures. This paper attempts to show how the power of international rules and national interests impacts China¡¦s IPR behavior by analyzing its attitude towards IPR negotiations, trends related to its IPR legal framework and enforcement. This analysis can be broken down into three different periods. 1. 1979-1990: Interaction between national interest and international norm. China¡¦s action of both participating in the world IPR regime and the building of a domestic IPR system was to large extent motivated by self-interest. China needed a systematic IPR framework in place to meet its new economic conditions: attracting FDI and technology transfers while protecting indigenous infant industries. However, there is little evidence that China¡¦s actions during this period showed compliance with the global IPR regime. 2. 1990-2000: Moving towards compromise. China¡¦s negotiations with the United States dominated trends in its IPR reform and reoriented China¡¦s national interests. As China¡¦s largest trade partner and hegemon in the IPR issue area, the U.S. played a strong role in making Chinese IPR laws more transparent and aligned with the international standard. For sustaining economic development, China realized it needed to create an environment friendly to foreign investors and protect its growing export industry of patented products, and Chinese leaders therefore conceded to a large part of U.S.¡¦s demands. Nonetheless, the reform mostly focused on the legal system while enforcement was overlooked, continuing the rampant IPR infringement. 3. 21st century: Compliance under the WTO regime. Through its experience in the 1990s, and its membership in the WTO, China¡¦s IPR policies in the 21st century have become more proactive and globalized, implying that China is willing to accept higher degrees of interdependence. In this period, China has strived to conform to TRIPS (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and has tackled its enforcement problem with a number of practical administrative and judicial policies to help reassure foreign investors and a growing amount of local IPR holders of the security of their IP. In the end however, the analysis in this paper still shows that China¡¦s current IPR protection policies still favor China¡¦s national interests over the interests of the global IPR regime. This paper finds that the global IPR regime has helped to influence a new agenda for the PRC: to pursue a knowldege-based economy as a development goal. China now intends to follow the rules of the global IPR regime. The central government's capability of enforceing IPR policy at every level of government is an important benchmark in examining China's response to the global IPR regime in the future.

International conventions signifies international trade, which in itself would be ineffective if there were no dispute settlement mechanisms. This essay intends to examine how dispute settlement mechanisms between states have developed over the years and a large emphasis is placed on the World Trade Organizations (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body since it’s had great significance for the efficiency of international law. In order to show the need for dispute settlement mechanisms, a background to the conventions that have called for the development of the DSB is in order. This essay focuses on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and the agreement that currently regulate intellectual property rights, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), but also its connection to the DSB. The current negotiations between the EU and the USA for a free trade agreement, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is also mentioned since it intends to serve as a global model once settled. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the emergence of the TRIPS agreement, and its relation to the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO.

<p>This thesis discussed the subjects of bioprospecting and the protection of traditional knowledge. At first the international approach to the subjects was elaborately discussed. The focus was on the respective provisions of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the related Bonn Guidelines, stressing the matter of access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilization. Enclosed in this discussion was the examination of different legislatory approaches to tackle the subject with an emphasis on national intellectual property rights laws and the role and potential merit of national registers of and databases for specific traditional knowledge. The way national legislators have implemented the concerned obligations of the convention, and their peculiarities as for example the restriction of scope of law to indigenous biological resources, was exemplified with the respective Bolivian, South African as well as Indian laws.</p>

Thesis (M.J.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-175). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This theses analyses necessity and legitimacy of existence of intellectual property rights, especially patents and copyrights. There is shown the true essence of these instruments as monopoly privilege. On case of information technology I demonstrate that these privileges are unreasonable and counterproductive in many cases. Analysis of ?free software? alternative model proves that use of patents and copyrights is not a necessary condition of creation of intangible goods. The last part of this work shows, that existence of any special instruments for intangible goods protection is not needed as well as it is not reasonable.

This dissertation provide not only a comprehensive overview on concepts and models of innovation, but it also provide critical analysis on the intellectual property system with an emphasize on the patent system and enforcement system in Vietnam. The empirical findings have suggested that legal business types, firm's age are amongst the determinant characteristics that indicate manufacturing innovation. Furthermore, a number of factors including rewarding scheme,average employee education,collaboration, training are the factors that influence manufacturing innovation.<p>Moreover, an in depth study on the patenting cost system of the fast developing ASEAN countries and China explore the impact of FDI and the patenting cost on the growth of resident patent registration ,which is observed following the traditional demand curve. With poor infranstructure and lack of competent IP personnel, the quality of patent granted is in questionaire. Finally, this research explore in depth the enforcement systems in Vietnam, which need further reform. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Pas de résumé / Doctorat en droit / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

International Protection of Industrial Rights Abstract The aim of thesis is to analyse international protection of industrial rights. Emphasis is placed on theoretical aspects of international law, specifics of functioning of international system, reasons explaining why the protection of industrial rights is included into international law and consequences of that. On the contrary thesis avoids detailed analysis of relevant international treaties which does not apply to TRIPS Agreement for its underlying significance of current system of international protection of industrial rights. Thesis is composed of nine chapters, including introduction and conclusion. Just after introduction the chapter dedicated to a brief introduction to basic terms of industrial rights is included. The introduction to the international level is represented in chapter three, this chapter tries to map the evolution and reasons of creation the protection of industrial rights on the international level from the half of 19th century to the present. Some current issues are also discussed here. Chapter four consists of two parts. First part focuses on international treaties, the crucial source of law on protection of industrial rights. Not only multilateral agreements but also bilateral agreements are discussed here. Second part deals...

This thesis extends the literature on institutional accounting by providing a new channel---proprietary information leakage between competitors---through which institutions affect accounting attributes and information disclosure. Weak property rights protection exacerbates outflow of proprietary information on operation, thus reduces managers' incentive to disclose financial information and other operation related information since the disclosed information will be helpful for competitors to learn more about proprietary information on operation of the firm. The channel is built with two links. One is the link between property rights protection and R&D spillovers, which proxy for proprietary information disclosure, and the other is the link between R&D spillovers and transparency. Empirical results show that R&D spillovers are negatively associated with regional property rights protection. In addition, I find that innovation output depends less on in house R&D investment and more on R&D spillovers from competitors in regions with weak property rights protection than in regions with strong protection and that the level of R&D expenditures is positively associated with property rights protection. Some evidence is found that firms with more R&D spillovers are more likely to have opaque earnings and disclose less firm-specific information. The relationship is stronger in regions with weak property rights protection than in regions with strong protection, indicating that firms are more likely to utilize opacity to prevent proprietary information leakage when R&D spillovers are large. / Yu, Xin. / Adviser: Joseph P. H. Fan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2123. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-79). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.