Evolution and trends of intellectual property crime research between 1991 and 2020

The appropriability of innovation benefits is essential to promote business development. Formal mechanisms protect this appropriability, such as patents or intellectual property (IP) rights. But not all countries respect IP rights and this phenomenon has increased in a complex way. There has been an academic interest in studying the trends regarding IP criminal activities. This study aims to identify the authors, universities and regions that publish the most in IP crime research worldwide. Using the Web of Science database, we analysed 589 articles published between 1991 and 2020 on the topic. The results indicate that approximately 75% of scientific production on IP Crime was written in the last decade, which is of great concern nowadays. The most influential authors come from the USA. This economy has stood out making progress in the establishment of formal mechanisms for the appropriation of innovation as a way to encourage more firms and innovators to develop new productive activities. Different developed economies, in Europe and Asia, also showed that academics study how markets advance through the protection of IP rights, but their studies have different focuses.