Intellectual property rights in the digital economy: issues, economics, law and ethics

Abstract

The emergence of new digital technologies and the increasing pervasiveness of the internet have led to a renewed examination of intellectual property rights. The papers in this minitrack tackle the intellectual property rights from a variety of vantage points; legal and policy, economic and ethical, and behavioral dimensions that make important contributions to our understanding of property rights in the increasingly digital world. The first paper in the minitrack looks at the impact of standards on the level of piracy. This paper by Chellappa and Shivendu analytically examines the economics of standards. Among the many interesting results of the paper is the result that maintaining different DVD standards across the regions allows producers to control the piracy of movies. In addition, they derive conditions under which consumers will engage in global piracy versus regional piracy and the overall profits are higher with multiple standards. The second paper in this minitrack looks at the interesting issue related to in Meta tag litigation. This paper by de Vuyst and Bodard ask the question whether the information contained in meta tags, and used by search engines, be used to infringe the intellectual property rights and whether it can be used for litigation purposes. The paper examines the meta