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The relationship between intellectual property (IP) protection and economic development is not better understood today than it was five decades ago at the height of the independence era in the Global South. Development indicators in many developing and least-developed countries reflect poorly in precisely the areas that are most closely associated with copyright law's objectives, such as promoting democratic governance, facilitating a robust marketplace of ideas, fostering domestic markets in cultural goods, and improving access to knowledge. Moreover, evidence suggests that copyright law has not been critical to the business models of the creative sectors in leading emerging markets. These outcomes indicate that the current configuration of limitations and exceptions (L&Es) in international copyright law has not advanced the human welfare goals that animate its leading justifications in developing countries. This Article argues that development interests require radically different kinds of limitations and exceptions to the copyright bargain than are reflected in international copyright law. The Article considers the design of the international copyright system in light of what economists have learned about the conditions necessary for economic development and examines what changes to international copyright L&Es those insights demand. It concludes that a more realistic dialogue about the relationship between copyright and economic development compels new types of L&Es, thus underscoring where developing and least-developed countries should sensibly invest their limited economic and political capital when engaging with the international copyright framework.

Open government data policies have become a significant part of innovation strategies in many countries, allowing access, use and re-use of government data to improve government transparency, foster civic engagement, and expand opportunities for the creation of new products and services. Rarely, however, do open data policies address intellectual property rights that may arise from free access to government data. Ownership of knowledge goods created from big data is governed by the default rules of intellectual property laws which typically vest ownership in the creator/inventor. By allowing, and in some cases actively encouraging, private capture of the downstream goods created as a result of open data policies, governments may fail to appropriate optimal returns to the public for its investment in big data. This Essay argues for coherence between open data policies and rules governing government ownership of intellectual property. It highlights the rule in US copyright law proscribing copyright in federal government works, arguing that public domain status is not invariably welfare-enhancing. The rule is sufficiently malleable to permit the federal government to assert ownership over knowledge assets developed from access to data that it owns or controls. Claiming copyright to engineer greater protection of the public interest could foster economic growth and facilitate the distributive welfare goals of intellectual property law more effectively than the public domain status that presumptively attaches to federal government works.

Technological innovation is a predominant source of persistent economic growth. Endogenous factors, principally human capital, financial capital, and government intervention play an important role in how the innovation process can enhance welfare through the grant of intellectual property rights. However, the expansive reacts of such proprietary interests in cyberspace has important implications for how e-commerce might contribute to overall economic growth. Thus far, the scope of intellectual property rights in cyberspace has been examined in isolation from empirical data reflecting how businesses seek to create value and effectively capture the benefits that the Internet offers over real-space markets. This Article argues that expansive construction of intellectual property rights distorts the informational properties of such rights and reintroduces high search and use costs to transactions in cyberspace. It also deters development and use of innovative business strategies that could generate greater value from e-commerce. Consequently, there is a need for more government intervention in regulating competition for markets in cyberspace.