ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the motivations that drove the reconfiguration of intellectual property in Ecuador. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, several distinct models for the interaction between the State and markets were adopted and later discarded in Ecuador and other Andean countries. The economic rationale for reforming the Ecuadorian intellectual property system was announced in the Preamble of the 2015 Ingenios Bill by referencing the Intellectual Property Law of 1998 that the Act would replace. If understood as an intellectual property law, one of the more surprising aspects of the Ingenios Act is that the majority of its provisions are devoted to subject matter outside of the traditional ambit of intellectual property. The Ingenios Act attracted attention from scholars and practitioners who were versed in conventional intellectual property law because the regime attempted to consolidate disparate conceptual orientations and pragmatic institutional operations.
