ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on who captures intellectual rents under intellectual monopoly capitalism by analysing Singapore’s innovation hub. We used a mixed-method case study methodology that combines in-depth interviews conducted at the beginning and the end of our investigation, with grey literature review and statistics on start-ups, patent co-ownership, and intellectual rents’ distribution. We find that, by 2018, universities owned 8% of total patents but enjoyed 0.02% of the countries’ intellectual rents. Meanwhile, corporations owned 85% of awarded patents until 2018 included, and almost 100% of the revenues from patents and new technologies developed in Singapore. These results were backed by our interviewees. Overall, we show that global intellectual monopolies are profiting not only from their corporate research and development based in Singapore but also from the innovative capacity of Singapore’s research universities and start-ups (all of which rely on public funds). Hence, the chapter invites us to question the possibilities for a non-core state to effectively capture part of the intellectual rents over powerful transnational intellectual monopolies from core countries.
