Commercialising human milk-based products (HMBPs) poses complex public health, ethical, and regulatory challenges for governments around the world. This study investigates the corporate strategies of the HMBP industry through a qualitative analysis of industry documents obtained from the University of California, San Francisco's Industry Documents Library. The analysis identifies how HMBP companies construct markets by positioning their products as essential to neonatal care and leveraging scientific narratives and professional networks to expand market dominance. These practices include embedding corporate interests in public health messaging and knowingly competing with non-profit milk donation systems. The findings reveal tensions between profit-driven innovation and equitable access to healthcare. The study highlights parallels with other health-related industries, where intellectual property (IP) and market control can deepen inequity. To address these issues, the study emphasises the need for stronger regulatory oversight, enhanced transparency in corporate practices, and support for public milk banking systems. By situating HMBPs within the Commercial Determinants of Health framework, this research provides policymakers and public health advocates with critical insights to safeguard equity in maternal-infant healthcare.

Enhancing intellectual property identification and valuation in manufacturing through digital twins

Managing intellectual property leakage in the digital era: An integrated process model

Philippine universities are required by law to adopt their own intellectual property (IP) policies. This endeavor involves multiple legal considerations and a balancing of interests among various stakeholders. However, studies focus mostly on the IP policies of reputable universities in developed countries, with few probing into the IP policies of academic institutions in the Global South. Moreover, the literature concentrates on the issues of ownership and economic rights, with little attention given to other crucial concerns covered by IP policies. This work provides a more holistic view of institutional IP frameworks by analyzing and comparing the broader business law aspects in the IP policies of Philippine universities previously included in the world university rankings. Through content analysis blended with doctrinal legal research, this paper examines their declared objectives, types of works covered, kinds of IP creators governed, guidelines for determination of ownership and consequent rights, systems for enforcement and dispute resolution, and alignment with legal principles on academic freedom, freedom of contract, and management prerogative. Findings reveal some similarities in their stated objectives and enforcement mechanisms but also highlight considerable differences in their ownership models and rules for commercialization. While this study does not purport to establish any trend in IP policy-making by administrators of world-ranked Philippine universities, it may nonetheless provide significant insights into what educational leaders prioritize in matters of IP management.

Pros and cons of Swedish law on intellectual property rights.

In the context of crowdsourcing contests, where winners take all, attracting high-quality solvers and solutions presents a significant challenge. A key issue in this environment is protecting solvers’ intellectual property and preventing fraud risks such as solution plagiarism and theft. Addressing these challenges is essential for maintaining the integrity of the platform and encouraging innovation. This study applies social network analysis to examine the structural characteristics of fraudulent seekers and investigate whether they exhibit distinct social network features compared to legitimate users. Specifically, we focus on centrality, cohesion, and structural equivalence to identify potential markers of fraudulent intent. Using a dataset from 9,282 contest projects initiated in China in 2014, involving 6,241 active users and 246 fraudulent seekers, we tested a fraud detection model based on social network metrics. The results reveal significant differences in degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and clustering coefficients between fraudulent and non-fraudulent nodes. The findings demonstrate that social network features, particularly centrality measures, can effectively differentiate fraudulent seekers from legitimate users. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of fraud detection in crowdsourcing and offers practical insights for the development of more robust fraud detection strategies.

In the context of crowdsourcing contests, where winners take all, attracting high-quality solvers and solutions presents a significant challenge. A key issue in this environment is protecting solvers' intellectual property and preventing fraud risks such as solution plagiarism and theft. Addressing these challenges is essential for maintaining the integrity of the platform and encouraging innovation. This study applies social network analysis to examine the structural characteristics of fraudulent seekers and investigate whether they exhibit distinct social network features compared to legitimate users. Specifically, we focus on centrality, cohesion, and structural equivalence to identify potential markers of fraudulent intent. Using a dataset from 9,282 contest projects initiated in China in 2014, involving 6,241 active users and 246 fraudulent seekers, we tested a fraud detection model based on social network metrics. The results reveal significant differences in degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and clustering coefficients between fraudulent and non-fraudulent nodes. The findings demonstrate that social network features, particularly centrality measures, can effectively differentiate fraudulent seekers from legitimate users. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of fraud detection in crowdsourcing and offers practical insights for the development of more robust fraud detection strategies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming healthcare and rehabilitation education, offering new pathways for personalized learning, adaptive assessment, and simulation-based training. This paper provides a rapid review and commentary on current research exploring AI’s integration into healthcare curricula, highlighting its potential to enhance competency development, critical thinking, and learner engagement. Evidence shows that AI can enrich educational experiences by tailoring instruction to individual needs, facilitating clinical reasoning, and reducing the cognitive and logistical burdens faced by graduate students who balance academics with professional and personal responsibilities. Yet, the increasing reliance on AI also introduces ethical, cultural, and pedagogical challenges, including algorithmic bias, data privacy concerns, inequitable access to technology, and the risk of diminishing independent judgment. Within rehabilitation education, additional issues arise related to patient confidentiality, assessment authenticity, and the unauthorized use of educators’ intellectual property. The findings emphasize that successful integration of AI in healthcare education depends on proactive strategies that uphold ethical practice, equity, and reflective learning. By embedding AI literacy, cultural humility, and clear ethical guardrails into curricula, educators can ensure that technology complements—rather than compromises—the humanistic and critical dimensions of healthcare practice.

Advances in digital technology and the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have accelerated the digital transformation of healthcare. Digital therapeutics (DTx), which deliver evidence-based interventions through digital means to treat or prevent diseases, are expected to generate significant value in modern healthcare. Strategic intellectual property (IP) protection for DTx is essential to support development costs, including clinical trials, and to ensure sustainable innovation. This study analyzed patent and design right strategies across different categories of DTx. We examined 25 DTx products registered with the Digital Therapeutics Alliance in the United States and five U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved augmented and virtual reality products as of April 2023, classifying them into three categories: app-based, app + device-based, and entertainment-based DTx. Patent data were collected from the Derwent Innovation Index, and design rights were identified using the Patent Public Search. A case study of one representative product from each category was conducted to contextualize these findings. The results revealed that half of app-based DTx lacked patent applications, often relying on platform technologies, while all app + device-based DTx had patents covering programs, biometric acquisition, and platform technology. Entertainment-based DTx exhibited the highest average number of patent applications, possibly due to their novelty and divergence from conventional treatments. Only five of the 30 products were protected by design rights, which appeared limited in scope and practical utility. Overall, distinct differences in patenting approaches were observed among DTx types, with design rights used sparingly. These findings suggest that optimal IP strategies vary by product architecture and that understanding such distinctions is essential for promoting innovation in digital therapeutics.

Abstract Background and aims Ibogaine, one of the oldest psychedelic alkaloids introduced to Western society and medicine, has a largely overlooked history prior to Howard Lotsof's accidental identification of its anti-addictive properties in the 1960s. This manuscript explores some previously hidden aspects of ibogaine, with a focus on the entangled cultural, colonial, and scientific histories related to its early development from plant and ritual remedy to commercialized pharmaceutical before the 1960s. Methods The article is primarily based on a non-systematic literature review of various discoveries found in historical sources. In structuring the findings, we outline three main and somewhat overlapping phases of ibogaine's historical trajectory before the 1960s: i) the colonial appropriation and classification of ibogaine-containing plants from the Congo Basin during French colonial rule, ii) the isolation of ibogaine from the Tabernanthe iboga plant in 1900 and the early pharmaceutical research on its effects and uses, mainly in the French scientific community, and iii) the commodification of ibogaine in several pharmaceutical products and their international diffusion throughout the 20th century. Drawing on a historiographical approach rooted in postcolonial perspectives on colonial botany, biopiracy, and the intellectual property system, our analysis foregrounds the power-relations that have structured each of these three phases of ibogaine's early development, use, and commercialization as a pharmaceutical. Results Throughout this historical investigation, we present evidence that ibogaine was commercialized in several retail medicines beyond the well-known Lambarène . These included Dragées Nyrdahl, Grains des Anémiques, Syséros, Viris Lucet , Ibobiose , and Iperton . We further present discounted records documenting local uses of iboga in the Congo Basin, alongside early scientific publications on ibogaine, both of which served to guide and contextualize the medical research conducted during the early and mid-20th century. These findings complicate simplified narratives of the drug discovery of ibogaine, underscoring the critical role of indigenous medicinal knowledge in contributing to and shaping subsequent scientific understanding. Moreover, we identify evidence that ibogaine was first used in Mexico in 1913 for the treatment of a substance use disorder – a finding that challenges established historiographies and compels a revision of the dominant account of the ‘discovery’ of ibogaine's anti-addictive potential. Conclusions The article uncovers a range of previously overlooked historical sources that broadens the understanding of ibogaine's international trajectory and its embeddedness in various cultural, colonial, and scientific contexts. By illuminating ibogaine's multifaceted past, we seek to deepen the understanding of its contemporary framing and contextualize its potential future use in Western medicine. This historical inquiry contributes to a more nuanced and comprehensive account of ibogaine's past and its evolving place at the intersection of pharmacological and cultural histories and changing power dynamics. Among other things, we complicate unilinear accounts of who ‘discovered’ the anti-addictive effects of ibogaine, and we provide historical grounds for recognizing the people of the Congo Basin as both knowledge and resource providers of ibogaine's early development and commercialization as a pharmaceutical.

University incubators increasingly support arts-based ventures, yet these entities are often treated as a monolithic category. This approach overlooks critical differences in production systems, intellectual property regimes, and distribution channels. This paper proposes a dual-path conceptual model to explain how artistic creativity transforms into sustainable entrepreneurial value. It distinguishes between craft-based ventures (e.g., lacquerware, metalwork), which rely on material authenticity and tacit skills, and platform-based digital ventures (e.g., short-video studios), which depend on algorithmic attention and rapid iteration. Drawing on exploration–exploitation theory and the resource-based view, the model identifies distinct development mechanisms for each path. The study argues that effective incubation requires differentiated support structures rather than a uniform startup toolkit. While grounded in the Chinese university context, the model offers relevant insights for arts incubation globally.

This paper critically examines Denmark’s proposed amendment to its Copyright Act, particularly section 73(a), which aims to grant individuals intellectual property protection against the unauthorized sharing of realistic, digitally generated imitations of their physical traits (deepfakes). While recognizing the well-intentioned aim, this study contends that the Danish proposal is fundamentally flawed both conceptually and teleologically. The analysis demonstrates that copyright law is an inappropriate framework for safeguarding elements of personal identity. A significant teleological mismatch exists: copyright law promotes economic and cultural objectives by encouraging the creation of works, whereas personality rights are grounded in the principle of human dignity. This misalignment risks turning intrinsic personality traits into commodities and undermining the coherence of the copyright system. The study proposes that Spain’s Organic Act 1/1982 on the civil protection of the right to honour, privacy and one’s own image offers a more suitable alternative. Despite its origins in the 1980s, this act’s substantive and procedural design effectively addresses technological challenges such as deepfakes without requiring major reforms. The paper concludes that reinforcing existing civil protection mechanisms provides a more consistent solution than relying on copyright law.

Trademark is considered one of the most prominent and important forms of intellectual property in the international economy. It is not limited to being a symbol for products and services but also serves as a means of communication and connection between producers and consumers in the global market. This article presents a comparative study of the trademark protection system in China and some Arab countries (the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Jordan). In addition to the historical evolution of trademark laws, it focuses on the similarities and differences in the principles of registration (priority), the scope of trademark protection, registration procedures, mechanisms for the protection of well-known marks, and the penalties imposed for infringement. The significance of this study lies in addressing a noticeable gap in research that brings together the Chinese system with Arab systems. It further serves as an academic guide for advising decision-makers, legal professionals, and companies operating in these rapidly growing markets.

Against the backdrop of the continuous integration of the platform economy and the digital entertainment industry, virtual idols have emerged as a crucial media form connecting cultural participation, digital labor, and capital operation. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as participatory culture, playbour, and platform capitalism, this paper takes Hatsune Miku as a case study to analyze how its platform structure, intellectual property arrangements, and commercialization mechanisms organize the digital participation practices of fans and creators. The research finds that through layered governance and peer production mechanisms, Hatsune Miku has buffered the common risk of labor precarity in platformized production to a certain extent, preventing cultural participation from being fully transformed into exploited digital labor. This paper thus argues that the structural differences in institutional design among different virtual idol platforms are key factors shaping participation forms and labor relations.

In the context of digital technology reshaping cultural communication, digital innovation of cultural intellectual property has become an important issue. This paper takes the game "Black Myth: Wukong" as the main case, around the theme of "cultural IP innovation path based on digital media", discusses how game modeling technology can be used as a translation language to achieve the extraction, reconstruction, and meaning regeneration of Chinese traditional culture. Through case analysis and text research, combined with cultural transmediation theory and digital media perspective, the study found that games transformed cultural heritage such as buildings and statues into interactive digital assets through high-precision scanning, procedural generation, environmental narrative and other technical means, significantly enhancing cultural immersion and reducing the cognitive barrier. At the same time, the game has built an open transmedia storytelling ecology, which has promoted players to change from receivers to participants and co-creators, effectively stimulated global players' interest in exploring China's deep culture, and driven the development of real cultural tourism. The research shows that game modeling technology is not only a cultural representation tool but also an important medium to promote the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture, providing a feasible path for the innovation and cross-cultural communication of cultural IP in the digital era.

ABSTRACT In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital transformation, start-ups driven by innovative technologies have become pivotal to the global economy. Among them, laboratory start-ups, based on intellectual property and experimental results from universities and government-funded research institutes, have garnered attention because of their superior success rates and job creation potential. This study focuses on founding team diversity and social capital as major factors affecting laboratory start-up performance, considering the start-up environment of increasing sociocultural diversity and the hyper-connected era. Therefore, this study selects and analyzes the I-Corps program, which has been evaluated as a representative laboratory start-up initiative launched by the US National Science Foundation in 2012 and introduced in Korea in 2015. The results indicate that gender and academic major diversity have a significant positive effect on start-up performance, educational background diversity has a significant negative effect, and cognitive social capital has a significant positive effect. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for researchers and practitioners in laboratory start-ups and related fields.

ABSTRACT This study employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the juridical field to examine how China’s Copyright Law is being adapted to regulate AI-generated content in video game development. It investigates how lawyers, as a key institutional actor, mediate the tension between technological innovations and established copyright doctrines. The analysis shows how intellectual property lawyers extend copyright governance to AI-generated works, balancing the protection of creativity with the state’s strategic priorities for AI development and the need to maintain a vibrant, accessible market. The research identifies a critical need for clearer legal standards on two fronts: the threshold of human creative contribution required for copyrightability, and the provenance of training data used by generative AI systems. These standards are foundational for assessing copyright registration, the scope of protection, and corporate compliance. By framing copyright governance as a form of cultural policy, the study contributes to broader debates on the intersection of copyright law and AI creativity, highlighting a flexible, open-ended, forward-looking approach to legal practices in which technological innovation and copyright protection reinforce each other in China’s video game industry. These insights offer practical guidance for game studios seeking to implement proactive industry self-regulation that harmonises innovation with evolving copyright norms.

In the era of technological revolution, high-tech industries have gained prominence in national innovation systems. However, China’s high-tech sector faces challenges such as late development, weak foundations, and regional disparities. To address these issues, this study proposes a shared-input two-stage network DEA model. This model, based on an input-output perspective, considers resources that circulate and collaboratively function across multiple stages in the form of shared inputs. This paper analyzes data from 25 provinces (including municipalities) in China from 2011 to 2020 and divides the patent conversion process into two sub-stages: the upstream technology research and development stage and the downstream achievement transformation stage, measuring the stage efficiency values and overall efficiency values, respectively. To align with reality, this paper incorporates the intensity of the strength of intellectual property protection, strength of government financial support, and the expenditure on technology import as regional shared input variables. Meanwhile, expenditure on technological transformation is treated as a capital-type intermediate input variable. This approach unveils the “black box” of single-stage DEA, enabling more accurate efficiency measurement. Key findings reveal: (1) China’s high-tech research and development of patent technology, the achievement transformation and overall conversion efficiency show annual improvement, yet overall efficiency remains low with regional imbalances; (2) Achievement transformation efficiency exerts a greater impact on overall conversion efficiency than research and development of patent technology efficiency. Comparative analyses with single-stage and chained two-stage DEA models confirm the necessity of phased evaluation and shared-input variables, supported by input-output elasticity tests. The findings validate the applicability and interpretability of the proposed model in efficiency evaluation.

The goal of this paper was to develop an approach to managing the investment mechanism in an innovative financial economy, which would fit the modern era of global uncertainty. To achieve this, we conducted trend, correlation, and regression analyses of risk management in venture investing in BRICS+ based on statistics for the period of global uncertainty (2014–2025). The compiled econometric model of the effectiveness of risk management in venture investing in the innovative financial economy of BRICS+ amid global uncertainty highlighted differences in approaches to managing the investment mechanism in this economy, depending on the level of risk it entails. In the age of free trade, the approach involved the use of the two tools of risk management of venture investing within the state management of an innovative economy: acceleration of economic growth and energy transition. In the current age of global uncertainty, there is a need for a new approach. It is developed in this paper and involves the use of market management tools: high-tech exports and the export of intellectual property objects. The perspectives of accelerating the development of an innovative financial economy of BRICS+ in the age of global uncertainty include the revision of the approach to the management of the investment mechanism in an innovative financial economy. For this, it is recommended to increase revenues from selling rights for intellectual property objects at a higher rate compared to recent years and to make a transition to an increase in the share of high-tech exports in the structure of industrial exports. The advantages of the proprietary model include the disclosure of the poorly studied experience of developing countries, accounting for global uncertainty (in the world economy), and a larger period of empirical research of the economies of the countries of BRICS+, which encompasses 2014–2025 and ensures a fuller and more precise and reliable interpretation of the dynamics of risks of venture investing and return on the measures of risk management in these countries.

ABSTRACT In recent years, there have been global shifts toward recognising and protecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property of biological resources (including medicinal plants) through global instruments, protocols, and treaties, including the Nagoya Protocol. The establishment of these instruments has occurred in step with a growing interest among Indigenous peoples in Australia in exploring the commercial potential of their traditional medicine plants. However, the regulatory body that assesses medicines in Australia has not yet approved an Indigenous medicine on the basis of traditional knowledge, despite outlining a pathway for doing this in its guidelines. In this paper, we draw on ethnographic research undertaken to support the aspirations of Nyikina people of Australia’s Kimberley region to commercialise a medicine plant to investigate how regulatory recognition may be simultaneously enabling and constraining. Building avenues for recognising Indigenous traditional knowledges into regulatory pathways emerges as a possible ‘disruption’ (Foster, 2012, ‘Patents, Biopolitics, and Feminisms: Locating Patent Law Struggles over Breast Cancer Genes and the Hoodia Plant.’ International Journal of Cultural Property 19 (3): 371–400. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739112000215) to the status quo of Western science, law, and epistemology. However, regulatory recognition provokes a set of complex questions. We explore the potential for anthropology and anthropologists to contribute meaningfully in this space as part of a post-conventional anthropology’s contribution to a broader social contract (Kearney, 2025. ‘Post-conventional anthroplogy: A paradigm for cultivating pluralism and confidence in uncertainty.’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 15 (2): 242–256. https://doi.org/10.1086/735868). Along with other papers in this Special Issue on Public and Post-Conventional Anthropologies, we interrogate what it means to do anthropology that is explicitly interventionist and argue that such scholarship can be simultaneously compromised and vital.