Why We Study Intellectual Property Rights and What We Have Learned

International policies toward protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) have seen profound changes over the past two decades. Rules on how to protect patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of IPRs have become a standard component of international trade agreements. Most significantly, during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1986–94), members of what is today the World Trade Organization (WTO) concluded the Agreement on TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which sets out minimum standards of protection that most of the world’s economies must respect. Additional international IPR rules have been created in various bilateral and regional trade agreements and in a number of intergovernmental treaties negotiated under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization. At a general level, these policy reforms were driven by two related forces. First, the emergence of new technologies has demanded continuous adaptation of IPR instruments. Key examples of areas in which technological developments have raised new intellectual property questions include integrated circuits, computer software, and biotechnology inventions. The advent of the Internet has posed special challenges to the printing and publishing and entertainment industries, because content in digital form can be perfectly reproduced at minimal cost. Second, the