ABSTRACT

In the vast sweep of the history of human creativity the impact of intellectual property rights has been negligible because for most of that history those rights have not existed and, where they have, for the most part they have been poorly designed and even more poorly enforced. This chapter expresses that the two most important institutional supports of innovation – universities and intellectual property – are only parts of the story of a culture of innovation. Public goods are defined in terms of two characteristics: non-rivalry and non-excludability. Knowledge provides an example of the characteristic of being non-rivalrous in consumption. Under information feudalism intellectual property comes to be seen and protected as part of the natural order of things. Ironically, information feudalism, by dismantling the publicness of knowledge, will eventually rob the knowledge economy of much of its productivity.