An Economic Perspective to Intellectual Property

Abstract

Intellectual Property can be seen from different economic perspectives. On the one hand knowledge economy and the relation to IP provide the Macro-Economic-Perspective and on the other hand the Micro-Economic-Perspective analyses the IP-situation in a Knowledge Economy for a firm. Thus, this paper will try to elaborate on these two perspectives and study the importance of IP management for the effective realisations of these economic perspectives. This paper has been divided into two parts, the first part tries to elaborate on the concept of Knowledge economy and its characterisation, the second part tries to justify the economic rationale for IP protection and gives an overview of the micro and macro-economic utilization of IP protection.