The Global Policy Framework: Intellectual Property Rights and Wrongs?

As discussed in earlier chapters, the global regime of IPRs protection strengthened dramatically in the 1990s, primarily through TRIPs but also through unilateral initiatives and intellectual property chapters in regional trade agreements. I presented the legal structure of TRIPs in chapter 2, and defined the concepts in chapter 3 in order to set the stage for the positive economic analysis of international economic effects of IPRs in chapter 4 and of IPRs and economic development in chapter 5. We are now ready to complete the circle by discussing important normative aspects of the new regime. This chapter focuses primarily on the TRIPs agreement itself, in terms of both its implementation and its potential effects on the international balance of costs and benefits. I also discuss the implications of differential standards for IPRs in regional trade agreements. The normative analysis, though grounded in data and economic logic, is necessarily rather speculative. I present it largely as a basis for wider discussion.