Skip to content

Brief

Intellectual Property: An Economic Development Imperative

An exploration on how intellectual property rights benefit both innovation and economic growth.

Business people at open laptop

Summary

Pro-business intellectual property (IP) rights are good for innovation and economic growth. When a business or institution creates something, it can retain ownership of that creation through intellectual property. Forms of intellectual property include copyrights, patents and trademarks.

Strong IP rights for businesses incentivize them to innovate, invest in R&D, and create. Likewise, guaranteed ownership encourages businesses to further scale those innovations and bring them to market. Currently, Canada and Ontario are global leaders in protecting IP. This is good, as it encourages foreign businesses to invest and create here, knowing their ownership over their solutions will be safeguarded. In fact, foreign IP claims grew by 139% between 2009 and 2018 as Canada embraced pro-business policies.

IP is good for business

Learn how strong intellectual property rights are good for innovation and economic growth.
Business people at open laptop