An Examination of National Factors That Influence Levels of Perceived Intellectual Property Protection

This paper analyzes factors that influence perceived intellectual property (IP) protection, as approximated by a sub-index of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report. The study is conducted for 134 countries from 1999-2009. The results suggest that more developed countries will have higher levels of perceived IP protection. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that countries with independent judiciaries and those with high reliability of police services will also have higher levels of perceived IP protection. In contrast, when the same enforcement related variables are analyzed against traditional measures of statutory IP protection during the same time period, judicial independence does not have a statistically significant impact on legal patent rights and the reliability of police services has a negative impact on the level of statutory IP protection in a country. This suggests that even though many nations have adopted a minimum standard for intellectual property rights as mandated by the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, many nations have yet to enforce those conditions. This paper finds that enforcement related concerns are key factors in explaining differences between perceived IP protection and statutory levels of protection in a country.

Grantor dc:publisher

Creighton University

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Silas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Briggs, Kristie N.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is retained by the Author. A non-exclusive distribution right is granted to Creighton University and to ProQuest following the publishing model selected above.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/16725

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:cdr.creighton.edu:10504/16725