Comment upon history and the debate over intellectual property

Abstract

The long historical view in Peng, Ahlstrom, Carraher, and Shi (2017), which discusses the issues regarding intellectual property rights (IPR) in China, is a welcome antidote to the overheated rhetoric in the public debate that characterizes China as a ‘pirate’ and slavish imitator. So, I thought that by engaging the paper obliquely, it might be possible to extend Peng et al.‘s (2017) observations and conclusions. I will do this by contextualizing their observations about the history of IPR and then turn to the contemporary discussions of IPR and innovation in China.