Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered

Abstract

In contemporary global capitalism, the most powerful corporations are innovation or intellectual monopolies. The book’s unique perspective focuses on how private ownership and control of knowledge and data have become a major source of rent and power. The author explains how at the one pole, these corporations concentrate income, property and power in the United States, China, and in a handful of intellectual monopolies, particularly from digital and pharmaceutical industries, while at the other pole developing countries are left further behind.

The book includes detailed empirical mappings of how intellectual monopolies develop and transform knowledge from universities and open-source collaborations into intangible assets. The result is a strategy that combines undermining the commons through privatization with harvesting from the same commons. The book ends with provoking reflections to tilt the scale against intellectual monopoly capitalism and arguing that desired changes require democratic mobilization of workers and citizens at large.

This book represents one of the first attempts to capture the contours of an emerging new era where old perspectives lead us astray, and the old policy toolbox is hopelessly inadequate. This is true for the idea that the best, or only, way to promote innovation is to transform knowledge into private property. It is also true for anti-trust policies focusing exclusively on consumer prices. The formation of global infrastructures that lead to natural monopolies calls for public rather than private ownership.

Scholars and professionals from the social sciences and humanities (in particular economics, sociology, political science, geography, educational science and science and technology studies) will enjoy a clear and all-embracing depiction of innovation dynamics in contemporary capitalism, with a particular focus on asymmetries between actors, regions and topics. In fact, its topical issue broadens the book’s scope to those curious about how innovation networks shape our world.

Full text

“This book is important reading for scholars and policy makers. It captures
the contours of an emerging new era where global monopoly power
increasingly is based on knowledge assets and access to data. It includes
detailed empirical mappings of how digital intellectual monopolies, pri-
marily located in the US and China, develop and transform knowledge
from universities and open source collaborations into intangible assets. It
shows how intellectual monopoly capitalism reinforces global inequality.
The book raises important issues in relation to current views on intellectual
property, anti-trust policy and development strategies.”
— Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Emeritus Professor,
AalborgUniversity and Lund University.
“Capitalism, Power and Innovation is a must read for scholars, policy
makers, and activists who would like to understand the developing forms
of intellectual monopoly capitalism. The volume brings together theoretical
analyses, empirical research, and case studies and presents the reader with
new insights on the rise of intellectual monopolies in sectors such as tech-
nology and pharmaceuticals; the interplays of the US and China through
their intellectual monopolies; and the impact of intellectual monopoly cap-
italism on developing economies. As such, it not only provides an elabora-
tion of the emergence and the rise of the intellectual monopolies but also
untangles the effects of intellectual monopoly capitalism at various levels.
The contributions in this volume are also an excellent starting point for re-
searchers delving into the question of how science and technology is being
transformed by powerful interests in modern capitalism.”
— Prof. Özgür Orhangazi, Kadir Has University.
“Knowledge and innovation can be the basis of development. Much of
today’s innovation occurs in transnational innovation networks. This book
asserts that these networks are organized through power relations and are
increasingly dominated by intellectual monopolies. Unfortunately, the de-
veloping countries participating in these networks are not approaching the
borders or advancing on the path of development. Cecilia Rikap contributes
new evidence and looks through different lenses at the relationship between
knowledge, innovation networks and power. She analyses how intellectual
income is captured, what are the channels for that and who captures it. On
this basis, she proposes specic policies to allow developing countries to
benet more from the knowledge created even in these countries, and to

avoid an extractivism of pure knowledge from the periphery to the centre.
Thank you for this effort, which nurtures the discussion to have a better and
less unequal world.”
— Gabriela Dutrénit, Distinguished Professor at the Autonomous
Metropolitan University and coordinator of the Latin
American Network on Learning, Innovation and
Competencebuilding (LALICS).
“In a time when intangible assets have become a critical factor of value crea-
tion and economic growth, our understanding of capitalism and its implica-
tions needs ground-breaking thinking. Cecilia Rikap’s book on Capitalism,
Power and Innovation presents frontier research on the nature and formation
of intellectual monopoly capitalism and its impact of the peripheries. It is a
must read for scholars and policy makers.”
— Prof. Xiaolan Fu, Technology and Management Centre
for Development, Department of International
Development, University of Oxford
“Capitalism, Power and Innovation gives us the right tools to understand
how a digitalisation driven by an interplay between the US GAFA (Google,
Apple, Facebook and Amazon) and the likes from China can deeply
constrain countries development and the fate of workers around the world.
This roadmap is thus very welcome.”
— Prof. Pascal Petit, Emeritus Research
Directoratthe CNRS.

CAPITALISM, POWER AND
I N NOVAT IO N
In contemporary global capitalism, the most powerful corporations are
innovation or intellectual monopolies. The book’s unique perspective fo-
cuses on how private ownership and control of knowledge and data have
become a major source of rent and power. The author explains how at the
one pole, these corporations concentrate income, property and power in
the United States, China, and in a handful of intellectual monopolies, par-
ticularly from digital and pharmaceutical industries, while at the other pole
developing countries are left further behind.
The book includes detailed empirical mappings of how intellectual mo-
nopolies develop and transform knowledge from universities and open-
source collaborations into intangible assets. The result is a strategy that
combines undermining the commons through privatization with harvesting
from the same commons. The book ends with provoking reections to tilt
the scale against intellectual monopoly capitalism and arguing that desired
changes require democratic mobilization of workers and citizens at large.
This book represents one of the rst attempts to capture the contours of
an emerging new era where old perspectives lead us astray, and the old pol-
icy toolbox is hopelessly inadequate. This is true for the idea that the best,
or only, way to promote innovation is to transform knowledge into private
property. It is also true for anti-trust policies focusing exclusively on con-
sumer prices. The formation of global infrastructures that lead to natural
monopolies calls for public rather than private ownership.
Scholars and professionals from the social sciences and humanities (in
particular economics, sociology, political science, geography, educational
science and science and technology studies) will enjoy a clear and all-
embracing depiction of innovation dynamics in contemporary capitalism,
with a particular focus on asymmetries between actors, regions and topics.
In fact, its topical issue broadens the book’s scope to those curious about
how innovation networks shape our world.
Cecilia Rikap is a tenure researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investiga-
ciones Cientícas y Técnicas (CONICET) and associate researcher at the
Centre de Population et Développement (CEPED), IRD/Université de Paris
and COSTECH, Université de Technologie de Compiègne. She is also an un-
dergraduate lecturer at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and postgraduate
lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Argentina.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN THE ECONOMICS
OF IN NOVATION
The Routledge Studies in the Economics of Innovation series is our home
for comprehensive yet accessible texts on the current thinking in the eld.
These cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections
bring together robust theories from a wide range of individual disciplines
and provide in-depth studies of existing and emerging approaches to inno-
vation, and the implications of such for the global economy.
THE IMPACT OF THE SHARING ECONOMY ON
BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
Digital Transformation and the Rise of Platform Businesses
Edited by Abbas Strømmen-Bakhtiar and Evgueni Vinogradov
AUTOMATION, INNOVATION AND WORK
The Impact of Technological, Economic, and Social Singularity
Jon-Arild Johannessen and Helene Sætersdal
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DIGITAL AUTOMATION
Measuring its Impact on Productivity, Economic
Growth and Consumption
Sreenath Majumder and Anuradha SenGupta
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AUTOMATION AND
THE FUTURE OF COMPETENCE AT WORK
Jon-Arild Johannessen
CAPITALISM, POWER AND INNOVATION
Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered
Cecilia Rikap
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-Economics-of-Innovation/book-series/
ECONINN

CAPITALISM, POWER
AND IN NOVATION
Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered
Cecilia Rikap

First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Cecilia Rikap
The right of Cecilia Rikap to be identied as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identication and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-0-367-35763-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-34148-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra

TO IRENE, WHO MADE ME BETTER

ix
CONTENTS
List of gures xi
List of tables xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Foreword xvii
1 Introduction 1
PART 1
Intellectual monopoly capitalism 21
2 The emergence of intellectual monopoly capitalism 23
3 Knowledge privatization and power relations in the
knowledge commons 45
4 The interplays of the United States, China and their
intellectual monopolies 65
5 Research universities: between subordination and
intellectual monopoly 86
PART 2
Global intellectual monopolies. Illustrative cases 105
6 Technological cooperation and competition among
bigpharmaceuticals 107
7 Apple: from legal towards data-driven
intellectualrentiership 131
8 Amazon’s data-driven intellectual monopoly 154

CONTENTS
x
9 State Grid Corp: an intellectual monopoly relying on
China’s innovation system 175
10 Rentiership, predation and their implications for workers 196
PART 3
Effects of intellectual monopoly capitalism on the peripheries 213
11 Why we need new development policies under
intellectual monopoly capitalism 215
12 Singapore’s innovation hub. A source of rents for
intellectual monopolies 235
13 Pharmaceutical knowledge extractivism from
a semi-peripheral university 257
14 Tilting the scale against intellectual monopoly capitalism 278
Index 293

xi
FIGURES
1.1 World GDP annual growth 2
1.2 World GDP per capita annual growth 3
1.3 Applied and granted patents per year 3
1.4 Patents, industrial designs and trademark. Application
class counts for the top 20 ofces (in millions) 4
2.1 World trade of ICT-enabled services (USD billion) 28
6.1 Network map. Novartis’s top 150 co-authors (2008–17) 115
6.2 Network map. Pzer’s top 150 co-authors (2008–17) 116
6.3 Network map. Roche’s top 150 co-authors (2008–17) 117
A6.1 Roche corporate tree granted patents assignees (2008–17) 126
A6.2 Novartis corporate tree granted patents assignees (2008–17) 127
A6.3 Pzer corporate tree granted patents assignees (2008–17) 128
7.1 Evolution of Apple’s granted patents (all major patent ofces) 137
7.2 Evolution of Apple’s prot rate, R&D investment,
intangible assets and advertising expense (millions USD) 138
7.3 Apple’s margins over time, with and without R&D as an
investment 139
7.4 Network map. Apple’s top 100 co-authors (2004–19) 141
8.1 Sales growth evolution. Selected transnational retailers 155
8.2 Margins over net sales. Selected transnational retailers 155
8.3 R&D over net sales. Selected transnational retailers 156
8.4 Amazon’s granted patents per year 156
8.5 Amazon’s patents semantic analysis 162
8.6 Network map. Amazon’s top 50 co-authors (1996–2018) 165
9.1 SGCC scientic publications and patents per year 183
9.2 Network map. SGCC scientic publications’
co-authorships (2003–10) 185
9.3 Network map. SGCC scientic publications’
co-authorships (2011–18) 186
13.1 Type of institutions owning patents that cite
UBApharmacy and pharmacology publications 267
13.2 Country of origin of the owners of patents citing
UBApharmacy and pharmacology publications 267

xiii
TABLES
2.1 Types of enterprises’ main characteristics 35
5.1 Summary rms, university types and impact on
academic labour 94
6.1 A preliminary two-period model for understanding
intellectual monopoly’s knowledge management 110
6.2 Basic gures for chosen big pharmaceuticals (in USD) 112
6.3 Selected big pharmaceuticals’ main funding sources as
declared in their scientic publications (2008–17) 122
A6.1 Roche Corporate Tree Granted Patents 2008–17: top 15
assignees’ frequencies 129
A6.2 Pzer Corporate Tree Granted Patents 2008–17: top 15
assignees’ frequencies 129
A6.3 Novartis Corporate Tree Granted Patents 2008–17: top 15
assignees’ frequencies 130
7.1 Net sales disaggregated by signicant products and
services (in thousands of USD and shares) 146
9.1 Three-step model for becoming a transnational
intellectual monopoly (IM) 179
9.2 Top SGCC’s applied and granted patents’ co-owners 189
9.3 Origin of patent assignees (either people or institutions) 190
9A.1 Granted and applied patents. Major utility companies 192
10.1 The intersections and differences between rentiership and
predation 201
12.1 Sources of R&D expenditure in 2018 244
12.2 Intellectual rents’ indicators in 2018 (S$ million unless
stated otherwise) 247
12.3 Licensing and sales revenues per type of enterprise in 2018
(S$ million unless stated otherwise) 248
12A.1 NTU patents’ corporate co-owners (2000–17) 251
12A.2 NUS patents’ corporate co-owners (2000–17) 252
13.1 UBA’s pharmacy publications by type of co-author 269