Intellectual Property Policies Set Canada’s and South Korea’s AI Strategies on Diverging Trajectories

In Canada, both federal and provincial AI policies involve partnerships with and funding of foreign corporations. They give very little attention to domestic innovation retention. By contrast, South Korea’s 2019 AI strategy focused on specializing and enabling domestic innovation. It also discouraged foreign acquisition of domestic firms. The policy’s recent update explicitly recognized the country’s “shortage of AI talent,” further emphasizing generation and capture of AI technologies.

The AI economy is emblematic of modern governance challenges. It is transnational, heavily concentrated, and often hard to conceptualize. The objective of this case is to provide a comparative perspective on two AI governance approaches and their outcomes.