IGIR & Innovation
Holding with Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, research carried out under the cluster IGIR & Innovation approaches the regulation of intellectual property with the goal of promoting “progress of science and useful arts”. We understand innovation as the process of transforming ideas into new or improved products, technology, services, production processes or artworks that have a meaningful impact in a market or society. The way we regulate ownership over intellectual property created in this process has an important impact on technological advancement, creativity and the just distribution of resulting benefits.
The research carried out in this cluster aims at studying how countries deal with the adaptive complexities of innovation cycles in order to secure innovation-based sustainable economic benefits, reward creativity and uphold justice in the innovation society.
We conduct such research and organize activities on innovation-related topics, and invite interested stakeholders to collaborate in our research and activities - including other academic partners, policymakers, international organisations, civil society, and companies.
Focus
The regulation of intellectual property is particularly relevant for technological advancement as IP rights incentivise innovation, foster creativity, provide fair conditions of competition on the market and contribute to a just distribution of benefits. The cluster IGIR & Innovation in particular analyses the role that frontier technologies, like artificial intelligence, play in the interface between innovation, creativity, reward and incentivisation. This raises the question whether intellectual property rights are still able and needed to fulfil their traditional function and whether current concepts of the original creator, inventor, consumer or the person skilled in the art still work in situations where technological tools have obtained a predominant role in innovative, creative or purchasing processes.
Where technological developments shift the perspective from being human-centric to a technology-driven perspective on innovation, creation and marketplaces, human creativity and human inventive capacity are under pressure. There is a fear that humans will not anymore be able to compete with technologically created works and inventions. The progressive development and use of polymathic artificial general intelligence, and artificial superintelligence may lead to a creative chill. IGIR & Innovation carries out research into alternative ways of fostering human creativity. This may involve new neighbouring rights, more regulation of technologically-driven solutions, creations and platforms, or self-regulatory (labelling) schemes that aim at facilitating and protecting human creators. This involves intra-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research into the effects of regulation on markets and human behaviour. The aim is to make sure that the benefits from innovative solutions and creative works are distributed fairly and in the end enhance our society.
Team
IGIR's intellectual property research group is a uniquely deep and broad group of multidisciplinary researchers working on intellectual property, innovation and knowledge management. The group has a particularly strong expertise in the field of international, European and comparative intellectual property research and analysis. Its composition allows for a wide geographical and linguistic research scope, enabling its researchers to excel at contrasting and comparing rationales, examining implementations of different forms of IP, and conducting evaluations of the goals and effectiveness of innovation and IP policy. Possessing of extensive experience in assessing the European Union’s intellectual property policy and its impact on the EU legal order, the external sphere and the national systems of the Member States, we have researched EU policies and authored studies on pharmaceutical patents, biotechnology patents, trade secrets, IP enforcement (ACTA), industrial designs, competition and standards, and copyright in digital markets.
The team currently consists of Anselm Kamperman Sanders, Anke Moerland, Kalpana Tyagi, Dick van Engelen, Christopher Heath and Meir Pugatch.
Projects
With IGIR & Innovation, we are engaged in several projects. Below are some of our major ongoing, and recent, intitiatives:
Making Agriculture Trade Sustainable (MATS)
MATS is a 3.5 year duration project (2021 – 2025). The consortium comprises 14 partners with a wide spectrum of expertise and competences, substantial and longstanding experiences, and wide geographical spread in Europe & Africa. See Making Agricultural Trade Sustainable.
Prof. Coppens, Andre Nunez Chaib and Prof. Kamperman Sanders were actively involved in the project as partners.
DeepMind
This study was carried out in 2024 by Prof. Pugatch, Prof. Kamperman Sanders and Dr. Moerland, together with several research assistants. The research addresses how copyright frameworks approach AI use in text and data mining, and a subsequent correlation with innovation, as seen in patenting trends.
EIPIN Innovation Society
This project received funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union from 2017 - 2021. It is at the forefront of multidisciplinary research, examining the role of intellectual property (IP) as a complex adaptive system in innovation. The ambition is to enhance Europe’s capacity to foster innovation-based sustainable economic growth globally. The primary research objective of the programme was to provide political leaders and stakeholders reliable conclusions and recommendations in the form of IP research on how to deal with the adaptive complexities of innovation cycles that secure economic benefits and uphold justice in the innovation society.
The consortium was led by Prof. Kamperman Sanders and Dr. Moerland.