This book is the English version of the text published by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in April 2008 and entitled Generacion y proteccion del conocimiento: propiedad intelectual, innovacion y desarrollo 1 economico. Since then, the year that has passed has been fraught with uncertainty but has also brought signs of hope. Indeed, the past year was marked by the outbreak of the deepest and most p- vasive nancial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929, a crisis generated in the United States but whose negative repercussions have spread at a...