THE IMPACT OF EFFICIENCY ON THE STRUCTURE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Despite the title of intellectual property law, this legal system differs from the classic property law in several aspects, inter alia, the time of protection, the standards for protection, the scope of protection and the enforcement of intellectual property rights. These limitations and differences are largely because of the economic considerations regarding different kinds of positive efficiency -dynamic and static efficiency -which determine the structure of intellectual property law. While the grant of the exclusive right is due to the dynamic efficiency considerations to encourage the creators and innovators, the considerations of statistic efficiency and wide access of consumers to innovations, cause limitations of this legal system. As a result, the necessity of managing trade-off between incentives – access should be a leading principle of policymakers of intellectual property law in determining the structure of the system and degree of protection, whether on the national, regional or international levels.