Through both theoretical and empirical analyses, the book explores current debates surrounding the role of patenting within the contemporary innovation system, notably those relating to university research and technological competitiveness. The text highlights the growing tensions between the IP system and the wider innovation environment, identifies the potential for and limits of universities' engagement with the system and explores the impact of new IP policy on innovation. The book provides a timely analysis of a range of problems which many governmental, corporate, professional and academic groups are currently confronting. The issue of intellectual property has come to the fore in recent policy debates over innovation strategy, debates which can only be answered from an interdisciplinary perspective.
This book brings together contributions from a number of academic disciplines - economics, law and sociology - as well as from practitioners in IP and as such should find a wide and receptive readership in universities, policy-circles and among patent, and academic- and industrial-liaison practitioners. Most of the contributions are based on ongoing empirical research.