The digital age has prompted new questions about the role and function of copyright. Internationally, copyright has progressively increased its scope of protection over new technology and modes of distribution. Yet many copyright owners express dissatisfaction and consider that the system is not working for them. Many users of copyright material, and even some owners, consider that copyright gives too much protection and that copyright owners want too much. This book considers how copyright might evolve in the twenty-first century and how it might reach equilibrium between authors, owners, users and those who connect them.

This work responds to the increasing need in many countries to better understand linkages between intellectual property, trade rules, and economic and social development, and to find new ways of implementing intellectual property rules and optimizing their effects. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the latest legal, economic, political and social research and advanced current thinking on the relationship between intellectual property and trade and development. With new chapters addressing access to educational resources and innovation in the developing world, the use of traditional knowledge as a source of innovation, and TRIPS, TRIPS Pus and Developments across the whole of South Asia, this fully updated second edition presents new insights and discussions from economists and social scientists and benefits from access to the latest metrics and analytical tools available.