The Significance of Intellectual Protection Rights System in the Knowledge Based Economy

The article discuses the increasing significance of protecting intellectual property rights in the knowledge based economy. The most common approach to this problemwhich can be seen in the public debate stresses the role of technological competition between market players and says that reforms of intellectual property protection system should facilitate process of obtaining patent protection for bigger amount of innovations of all kinds for longer time. This should encourage all companies to invest in research and development, which will improve innovation capability of the whole economy. The article shows that realization of this common belief can lead to some counterproductive results, which can especially be important in case of knowledge based economy sectors. On the other hand, the article argues that the discussion on intellectual property protection should not only concentrate on the technological competition process, but it should also take into consideration an influence of the reform on the technological cooperation process. This is especially important in case of creating an institutional background for cooperation between so called general purpose technology sectors and application technology sectors, which can be the core of innovation process in the knowledge based economy.