Russian Innovation and Intellectual Property : From Communism to Capitalism

This book features new information on Soviet and present-day Russian innovation and intellectual property rules. It is intended for scholars and advanced students of law and technology, intellectual property law, law and political economy, law in context, international development, and Russian area studies.

This book explores Russia's 100-year history of institutional experiments with legal forms, incentives, and organizational structures in search of an optimal system of knowledge production and diffusion. How was the Soviet Union able to industrialize in the absence of intellectual property, while Russia fails to re-industrialize despite adopting strong intellectual property rights that are presumed to be better suited to promoting innovation? What happened to Russia after it introduced the globalized rules of intellectual property? Informed by interviews with key players in the Russian innovation system and case studies in biopharmaceutical and information technology industries, the book exposes the informal side of the institution of intellectual property in Russia. The study reveals that the Russian case is not simply a story of institutional decline; it is also a story of how a new informal system is evolving in which new networks are steering Russia's approach to innovation.