Technology and Knowledge Transfer as a tool to boost local competitiveness in Cuba

The transfer of technology and knowledge emerges as a guide for economic development and social progress. This complex process, in its legal dimension, must be faced in contexts of digital era and creativity, modulating Intellectual Property Rights. Thus, it constitutes a valuable tool to boost local competitiveness in a globalized world, being able to improve productivity, efficiency, and quality of local products and services. From a socio-legal perspective, it poses challenges in terms of protection and exploitation of intellectual property. Local competitiveness demands ensuring that the transferred technology also benefits small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the most disadvantaged communities. Cuba faces these challenges from the socio-legal implications of the topic, the opening of a fluid non-state sector in the economy, and the commitment to a government management policy based on innovation. Transfer mechanisms constitute an ideal vehicle for assimilating technological advances in a society based on the Knowledge Economy. These must be carefully designed and regulated. The article aims to introduce research outputs from a legal approach to the Cuban legal framework. It employs socio-legal research methods with a qualitative approach: analysis, synthesis, dialectical, theoretical, exegesis and the technique of bibliographic review. The output is a set of theoretical recommendations in order to boost the Cuban intellectual property system.