Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, and Knowledge Economy in Arab Countries

Domestic Institutions And Iprs For Development

David (1992) investigates the historical evolution of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), and traces the present state of modern IPRs. The advancement in technologies and the importance of research and development made the product life shorter and made it very easy for engineers to copy innovative ideas from competitors. This drove companies to care more about ways to protect their innovations in all fields. The current spirit behind the concept of IPRs is more lucrative and utilitarian. It is based on defending rights of collecting money coming from innovative works. However, the historical sense of IPRs was that the innovators get credit for their work, but then everybody could benefit from the scientific or technological advancement.

Hatipoglu (2007) aims at building a theoretical framework that integrates the relationship between multinational companies (MNCs) and host governments. Hatipoglu (2007) builds up onto two hypotheses supporting the fact that governments’ evasion from their commitments on IPRSs protection is greatly affected by the nature of their political system and their institutions that sort out the society’s demands. Furthermore, Hatipoglu (2007) suggests that the conceptualization of knowledge production is subject to conflicts of interest. Evidence from Hatipoglu (2007) asserts that domestic institutions and political systems are important components of foreign investors’ evaluation of the government commitment to IPRs protection. In fact, it is stated that the Arab countries as one set of South Mediterranean economies, are more likely to favor IPRs protection commitments by countries that are less democratic and are initiating development, which is due to less economic growth and thus, less public pressure concerning consumption and satisfaction.

Sinha (2007) studied the influence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the “institutional development and policy responses” in India as an example of the level of international organizations’ influence on the way the country internationalizes. Policy makers and societal groups are under this influence going to either push towards more globalization in some domains or towards less globalization in others.