While growing disparities in wealth and income are well-documented across the globe, the role of intellectual property rights is often overlooked. This volume brings together leading commentators from around the world to interrogate the interrelationship between intellectual property and economic inequality. Interdisciplinary and globally oriented by design, the book features economists, legal scholars, policy analysts, and other experts. Chapters address the impact of intellectual property rights on economic inequality, the effect of economic inequality on the protection and enforcement of these rights, and the potential use of innovation law and policy to help reduce economic inequality. The volume also tackles timely issues like race and gender disparities and the North-South divide in innovation. This book is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘A refreshing perspective on innovation, property rights and global inequality. Countries in the global South have often found ways in the past to circumvent the technological protectionism of the North - but this process could and should be accelerated in the future. A must-read.’

Thomas Piketty - author of Capital in the 21st Century, Capital and Ideology, and A Brief History of Equality

‘Property and inequality have been discussed for more than two millennia in the western tradition. Little has been said about the role of intellectual property. This volume sets the stage for thinking about this neglected issue. Drawing on contributors and cases from all over the world it is polycentric and rigorous in its exploration of the issues. For scholarly and policy audiences this book is key to thinking about why so much blue-sky innovation never fulfils its radical potential for reducing economic inequality.’

Peter Drahos - European University Institute and Australian National University

‘There is an urgent need for this book, which challenges the received orthodoxy. The story goes that innovation is a fundamental driver of long-term economic growth. Intellectual property law is a crucial institutional support for innovation. As countries become technologically more advanced, inequalities are assumed to diminish through spillover effects and productivity growth. However, the core function of IP law is to allocate property rights. Rights grant power. To whom are these rights allocated? Who gets to participate? And how is power distributed? These pointedly distributive questions are framed – and answered – by the experienced editors and expert contributors in a range of compelling empirical, conceptual, and doctrinal ways. What makes this book unique is the drawing together of different strands of inequality research on IP. The best developed of these, on ‘global inequality’, has been prominent since the conclusion of the TRIPS Agreement in 1994. How are international IP norms and standards developed in one context imposed on others? This volume additionally takes up the question of whether IP law reflects or exacerbates inequalities along the lines of gender and race. And some contributions focus on a third strand of inequality: whether IP has a role in the concentration of wealth across time and the entrenchment of economic inequality; not only across national borders but highlighting the uneven distribution of benefits within countries as well. This thought-provoking and nuanced volume should catalyze much-needed research at intersections of IP and inequality in the future.’

Dev Gangjee - Professor of Intellectual Property Law, University of Oxford Law Faculty & Tutorial Fellow, St Hilda's College