In emerging markets today, legal protections for intellectual property are weak and enforcement is lax. Counterfeiting of consumer goods and infringement on patents, copyrights, and trademarks cost corporations hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Strengthening laws and intensifying...

The prevailing paradigm presumes that manufacturing guilds in medieval England monopolized markets for durable goods. The sources of the monopolies are said to have been the charters of towns, charters of guilds, parliamentary statutes, and judicial precedents.This essay examines those sources,...

The prevailing paradigm of medieval industry rests on the belief that guilds monopolized markets for manufactures. The type of market power possessed by guild which manufactured durable goods is, however, unclear. Scholars have shown manufacturing guilds did not possess natural monopolies.