The CEPN (Centre of Economics of Université Paris Nord) is a joint research unit structured around three themes: 1) financial risks and regulation; 2) political economics and applied macroeconomics; and 3) institutions, markets and intellectual property rights. The research carried out in the centre’s three fields of expertise is done from a shared perspective of structural analysis of contemporary economies, and gives ample place to institutions and history.
The researchers affiliated to IFRIS and grouped under the “institutions, markets and intellectual property rights” research thrust follow two orientations:
- The “Intellectual property rights and innovation” research programme is dedicated to the analysis of the “new regime” of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), of which one of the major characteristics is that it provides for the patentability of “upstream” knowledge (genes) or “generic” knowledge (the algorithms used as a base for software and business methods). Moreover, this new regime, by the fact that it is spreading internationally (e.g. the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights signed in 1994), makes new tensions reemerge in North-South relations, especially where its impacts in matters of public health are concerned. This situation changes the way in which the relations between Intellectual Property (IP) and Innovation are thought of.
- The “Economy of culture and the immaterial” programme is built around the central issue of the economic models that are likely to emerge due to the migration of the cultural industry to digital formats – an issue that is closely linked to that of the evolution of the institutional models attending the development of these industries. The central element around which these models have been forged relates back to the constitution and reinforcement of intellectual property rights. The emergence of free products, the deconstruction of the divide between production/distribution and diffusion/consumption are at the heart of the research carried out within this framework. More generally, this research constitutes laboratories of ideas for analysing the knowledge and information economies.
Institutions to which it is affiliated: Université Paris XIII, CNRS
Website: https://cepn.univ-paris13.fr/