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The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

This paper aims to explore the contours of the future intellectual property (IP) protocol of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement.

This paper frames the IP protocol within the architecture of the AfCFTA Agreement, meaning that it will follow the structure of other protocols and will be guided by the Agreement’s foundational principles and objectives. With the place, shape and form of the protocol so established, the paper considers the substantive aspects that ought to be addressed. It also considers provisions on technical assistance, capacity building and cooperation.

The paper finds that the Tripartite Free Trade Phase 2 IP agenda is a credible starting place, which must be broadened to better meet gendered challenges and the continent’s developmental priorities. This will entail including provisions on specific aspects enumerated in the paper, which must be aligned with provisions on technical assistance, capacity building and cooperation to enhance implementation. The best outcomes in the negotiation, adoption and implementation of the IP protocol will be achieved by an inclusive approach incorporating all national, sub-regional and regional institutions guided by coherent policy and coordinated to ensure efficiency in resources and capacity mobilisation.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to formally consider both the architecture and substantive provisions of the future AfCFTA IP protocol with specific focus on gendered dimensions.

Since 2015, China has made efforts to reform its intellectual property rights (IPR) system to better protect and stimulate innovation. These reforms are a result of the demand for more stringent intellectual property (IP) protection from China’s domestic, innovative industries and a measure to ease the pressure exerted by its foreign trading partners, particularly against the background of the US-China trade dispute that started at the beginning of 2018. This paper summarizes these reforms and their implications.

This paper combines a variety of sources, including academic articles, government websites, news reports, industry surveys and expert opinions, to offer insights in China’s IPR system and its recent reforms.

This paper summarizes and discusses (1) the state’s law amendments, including the 2015 amendment of the “Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements”, the second amendment of the “Anti-Unfair Competition Law” with regard to trade secret protection, the fourth amendment of the “Patent Law”, and the legislations and regulations addressing the criticisms of the US administration over China’s so-called “forced” technology transfer policies; (2) the establishment of the specialized IP courts and tribunals since 2014; (3) the restructuring of the State IP Office; and (4) the issuing of an “Outline for Building an IPR Powerhouse (2021–2035)”.

This paper highlights China’s efforts to make its IPR system stronger and more just. It also discusses international observers’ reactions and pinpoints specific areas for further improvement.

This paper aims to verify how the intellectual property (IP) box affects firms’ effective tax rate, growth and innovation activity outcomes related to intellectual property rights.

Implementing the innovation box regimes into the tax system intends to encourage firms to engage in more innovative activities. In UK, Italy and Poland, the IP box tax relief was introduced in 2013, 2015 and 2019, respectively. In return, companies may reduce their tax rate to increase their investment and innovativeness. With a panel model approach – system GMM and DiD with multiple time periods – it analyses data from the Orbis database for 2011–2019 of 673 firms from the gaming industry in 11 countries and hand-collected data on intellectual property rights protection. The authors study public and private companies from the gaming sector in leading European markets and all three countries that protect intellectual property rights of software (Japan, South Korea, the USA).

Recent reforms enable gaming companies to use preferential tax treatment for IP-related income and significantly impact a firm’s revenue growth.

Nevertheless, European gaming firms require time to leap the gap to the growth and innovativeness of countries that protect software.

The authors show that the IP box stimulates gaming firms to protect IP via wordmarks, figurative marks, trademarks and software patents that bring effects in five years. Despite the critics against IP box, the authors prove its lagged efficiency, especially in profitable and larger firms.

This study aims to investigate the impact of digital technologies for intangible assets management. The authors analyse how technological innovations and regulations of intellectual property affect business models of companies or intellectual property rights (IPR) intensive industries to determine the impact of digital transformation on intangible assets management, highlighting emerging issues and future effects of the digital technology revolution.

The authors use a case study method to answer our research questions. The authors use Soundreef SpA as our case study, a collecting company that develops technology for monitoring, collecting and maximising the earnings of songwriters and music publishers. The authors also elaborate and adopt the framework of the enhanced intellectual capital as the theoretical lens for presenting and analysing our case study, determining how the digital transformation caused business model innovation and more transparent and timely performance measurement in copyright-based companies.

The analysis of Soundreef SpA’s business model allows us to demonstrate how using new technologies drives the performance measurement of copyright holders and improve the collecting societies’ performance, introducing a new key performance indicator. This turning point is made possible by digital transformation and regulatory change. In the IPR industry, copyright holders’ performance has never been calculated, so the distribution of copyright revenues was based on the criteria approved by governance bodies/management.

In the study, the authors demonstrate that digital transformation is able to enhance the intellectual capital of IPR-intensive companies introducing new ways to manage intangible assets and to measure performance.

This study aims to empirically investigate how difference in social trust explains the heterogeneity of intellectual property right (IPR) protection (proxied by software piracy rate) across countries. Specifically, the authors also examine whether this effect is complementary or substitute to legal and economic factors.

The authors use both ordinary least square and two-stage least square regressions to investigate this effect.

The authors find that there is also a complementary effect between trust and rule of law in reducing the violation of IPRs.

Although the literature by now has documented the solid relationship between trust and the quality of formal institutions, only few studies have explored more specific measures of institutional consequences. Thus, this study is the first study investigating the role of trust, a valuable social capital dimension, on IPR protection.

The purpse of this study is to examine sustainable technology development (STD) during the “Valley of Death” phase encountered by university startups undertaking intellectual property rights (IPR) commercialisation.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted after searching for relevant documents across multiple databases. Semi-structured interviews with university startup founders were also conducted as part of a qualitative case study.

This study resulted in two significant findings. First, the Valley of Death has been redefined in the specific context of IPR commercialisation by university startups. Second, the sustainable technology development framework (STDF) has been conceptualised to enhance the success rate of IPR commercialisation by university startups. The authors also identified three essential components of STD in the context of university startups: market development, technical efficiency and business sustainability.

This exploratory research involved a thorough literature analysis. Given that only one qualitative case study was conducted, data saturation was not achieved. Further empirical research is needed to validate the conceptualised STDF.

The validated STDF will be a useful tool for enhancing the success of IPR commercialisation by university startups.

While others have focused on innovating business models, this study focused on an underexplored area: the sustainability of technology development during the commercialisation of IPR by university startups during the Valley of Death phase.

This paper aims to present reflections and points of interest on the performance of Brazil and highlight the advances and challenges in relation to the intellectual property (IP) system; the authors highlight some scientific, economic and technological indicators on the main IP objects registered in the National Industrial Property of Brazil (INPI).

A structured literature reviews the main indicators of IP of Brazil (2013-2017), related to the scientific and economic factors more evidenced in the global scenario, with emphasis on the investment of national GDP in R&D activities, the allocation of resources from the government sector and private initiative, as in other emerging economies, such as the BRICS.

Despite Brazil’s progressive efforts to achieve greater efficiency in the public IP management system, GDP investment in R&D activities for 2019 is still below the OECD average of 2.3 per cent, and the IP indicators in the areas of patent registration, industrial designs and technology contracts have been declining.

Because of the difference between the laws of the countries on IP rights, the more incisive comparison could not be established among the emerging economies, highlighting the need for a standardization between the different international legislations.

In the scientific field, this paper allows understanding the performance of the Brazilian IP system, and the categories that require greater investments, strengthen the IP culture and stimulate integration between the international IP systems, as it is a recurrent discussion in different research studies. Originally, the paper brought together economic and scientific indicators going beyond the traditional approach that deals with IP only restricting to the quantitative of patents.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate innovations in intellectual property rights (IPR) databases, techniques and software tools, with an emphasis on selected new developments and their contribution towards achieving advantages for IPR management (IPRM) and wider social benefits. Several industry buzzwords are addressed, such as IPR-linked open data (IPR LOD) databases, blockchain and IPR-related techniques, acknowledged for their contribution in moving towards artificial intelligence (AI) in IPRM.

The evaluation, following an original framework developed by the authors, is based on a literature review, web analysis and interviews carried out with some of the top experts from IPR-savvy multinational companies.

The paper presents the patent databases landscape, classifying patent offices according to the format of data provided and depicting the state-of-art in the IPR LOD. An examination of existing IPR tools shows that they are not yet fully developed, with limited usability for IPRM. After reviewing the techniques, it is clear that the current state-of-the-art is insufficient to fully address AI in IPR. Uses of blockchain in IPR show that they are yet to be fully exploited on a larger scale.

A critical analysis of IPR tools, techniques and blockchain allows for the state-of-art to be assessed, and for their current and potential value with regard to the development of the economy and wider society to be considered. The paper also provides a novel classification of patent offices and an original IPR-linked open data landscape.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between heterogeneous collaborative networks and firm performance, using the resource-based view (RBV) and its extension through the knowledge-based view (KBV) as theoretical lens. Moreover, the authors examine family management and intellectual property rights (IPRs) as contingent factors that enhance the effectiveness of heterogeneous collaborative networks in achieving superior firm performance.

The hypotheses are developed and checked by using a panel data sample of 10,985 firm-year observations from 1,766 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2007–2016.

The results indicate that heterogeneous collaborative networks positively influence firm performance. Furthermore, the positive impact of these innovation networks on firm performance is reinforced by high levels of family management, and such effect is even stronger when there exists high levels of IPRs.

This research is the first, to our knowledge, to provide important new insights into the manner in which the effect of both family management and IPRs have the potential to amplify the performance gains attained from heterogenous collaborative networks.