This volume explores the various intellectual property dynamics that emerged during the Cold War, circa 1946–1980. This period brought about some of the most poignant moments in the development of twentieth-century international intellectual property rights, when competing economic systems recognised the value in innovation, human creativity, cinema, and international intellectual property norms and institutions. Examining these developments from a Cold War approach can say much more as it allows for the examination of processes and norms that cater to strong domestic intellectual property rules in Western capitalism while yielding to ‘universal’ or ‘common’ property norms in copyright in socialist states. This volume connects some of the different advances made in the international emergence of these competing developments regarding intellectual property rights and emphasises the role of intellectual property institutions, processes, and universalism that helped keep Cold War rivals on the same normative, foundational street for intellectual property rights.

Contributors are: P. Sean Morris, Peter. B. Maggs, Lodewijk van Dycke, Hans Morten Haugen, Phillip Johnson, Jose Bellido, Johanna Gibson, Sarah Rajec, Hannibal Travis, Johanna Dahlin, and Jocelyn Bosse.