Course description
Intellectual Property (IP) is a set of economic and moral rights concerning intangible creations of the human intellect. It includes patents on inventions, copyright on artistic work (but also software), trademarks on goods and services, but also more specific rights on plant varieties or traditional knowledge. IP rights (IPRs) are nowadays a major economic resource for a variety of organizations, ranging from pharmaceutical and hi-tech multinationals engaged in global trade, agricultural consortia resisting the commodification of their products, media companies selling their contents through the internet, and software companies licensing their applications for computers, mobiles and connected objects.
The course will consist of two parts. In the FIRST PART it will introduce students to the history and economic theory of IPRs. Mainstream economic theory and law scholarship mostly explain the existence of IPRs in terms of the economic incentives they provide, to both individuals and companies, to engage in innovation. More recent studies emphasize instead their role facilitators of trade, both of goods, services, and media contents. As for the history of IP, this predates the birth of capitalism, as it dates back to international trade and public procurement in ancient times (trademarks), technology transfer and migration policies in modern Europe (patents), and the invention of printing (copyright). Following the evolution of IPRs over time offers a unique viewpoint for evaluating the soundness of dominant theories and political discourses.
In the SECOND PART, the course will discuss the history and politics of international treaties on IPRs, which have transformed IP into a veritable global issue. Initially, we will focus on TRIPs, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which coincided with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 1995. After that, we will discuss several post-TRIPs treaties, either in realm of international trade or in those of culture and health, all of which include important norms on IP. The economic and political context behind these treaties is one of tensions between advanced countries and least developed or developing ones. The former, having lost most comparative advantages in terms of production costs, increasingly rely on technology exports to sustain their international trade balance, and wish to protect it with strong IPRs. The latter, having less or no autonomous technological potential, react to this pressure either by trying to resist it or by making concession in exchange of access to advanced countries’ markets.
IP globalization has not only economic, but also societal implications. The course will focus on two of them. First, protection of pharmaceutical IPRs can impact on the price of drugs, with important welfare consequences in both the poor countries and among the poor population of better-off ones. Second, patents and breeders’ rights on seeds for cereals and other foodstuffs put poor countries’ farmers in a weak bargaining positions, when it comes to buy both the seeds themselves and accessory products such fertilizers and pest controls. Other implications will be explored, if students will propose them.
The following YouTube videos give a glimpse of the contents and general message of the course:
• Farmamundi – India, the pharmacy of the world, Nov 2013 (last visit 16/5/2020)
• World Intellectual Property Organization – Views on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Jan 2016 (last visit 16/5/2020)

Learning outcomes of the course
At the end of the course, students will understand the legal and economic fundamentals of the most important forms of IP. The historical perspective provided by the course will allow them to appreciate the soundness of the economic theories and political positions. As for the core contents of the course, IP globalization, students will get a knowledge of the legal, political, and economic logic and consequences of international treaties. Skill-wise, students will be able to retrieve information from international organizations such as WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) and policy or business articles for accessible magazines and newspapers, such as The Economist or the Financial Times.

Teaching and evaluation methods
a. All the course material (slides, readings, data) will be made available before the start of the course on the Moodle platform. The readings will be listed at the end of each slide set, and come in three categories:
(i) COMPULSORY: short and very short dissemination articles and blog entries by academic researchers, accessible to students from all backgrounds; alternatively, subsections of equally accessible survey papers or handbooks
(ii) OPTIONAL: the research papers underlying the compulsory readings; students with some background preparation in economics and/or applied statistics may wish reading them
(iii) SOURCES: the book chapters and research papers used by the instructor to prepare the slides; this material is just for reference, but all students are welcome to use it for in-class discussions

b. Frontal classes (lectures) and in-class activities (discussion of readings) will be alternated regularly. The first two weeks of courses will consist entirely of lectures, to be delivered online live by Zoom (video records will be made available on the Moodle platform). Starting the third week, the in-presence lectures will be recorded and made available on the Moodle platform. Class discussion will not be recorded, nor video-attendance by remote students will be possible; these students will be asked to send short videos and slides with their discussion of readings

c. Lectures will be based on slides and concentrate on either the key stylized facts to be retained or the basic theoretical elements to be understood.

d. In-class activities will consist in discussing either (i) the lecture-related materials (to make sure students read them instead on just relying on slides) or, at the end of the course, (ii) the student’ presentations, based on materials searched by the students themselves, on topics of their interest. Notice that:
o Discussions of (i) will be an individual activity (Q&A in class).
o The production of essays and the discussions of (ii) will be conducted by small groups.
o Students with data handling skills will be given the opportunity to work on data from public sources or provided by the lecturer.

e. Activities (i) and (ii) will also serves as the basis for evaluation, according to the following weights and parameters:
_70% - Contribution to in-class activities: Did the student go through the readings? Did she/he prepare for the discussion items? Did she/he come up with original questions/remarks?
_30% - Slides-based presentation (15minutes) of the topic of choice

Syllabus
Basic economic and legal notions
Economics of patents /1: (i) legal, procedural & economic basis; (ii) historical overview
Economics of patents /2: (i) optimal duration and duration of drugs protection (iii) cumulativeness
Economics of copyright /1: Legal basics & History
Economics of copyright /2: Economic analysis
Economics of trademarks and geographical indications
The TRIPs Agreements /1: History & Politics
The TRIPs Agreements /2: Economic analysis
The TRIPs aftermath /1: The Doha round, TRIPs-plus, and WIPO
The TRIPs aftermath /2: Public Health
The TRIPs aftermath /3: Plants & Genetic Resources
The TRIPS Aftermath /4 Traditional knowledge

Required preliminary knowledge: none, but some basic notions of economics may help