The debate over international intellectual property rights has become an important foreign policy issue for many industrialized countries, and particularly for the United States. US companies complain that they have suffered greatly from the lack of rigorous and uniform international standards for intellectual property rights, and the US government has consequently undertaken to strengthen rights protection - through bilateral consultations with other countries and through multilateral forums such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most developing countries have committed to raise their standards of intellectual property protection, but how quickly they will adopt new standards of protection and what form the standards will take remain open questions.

Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy: Lessons from Information and Communication Technology examines how leading national and multinational standard-setting organizations (SSOs) address patent disclosures, licensing terms, transfers of patent ownership, and other issues that arise in connection with developing technical standards for consumer and other microelectronic products, associated software and components, and communications networks including the Internet. Attempting to balance the interests of patent holders, other participants in standard-setting, standards implementers, and consumers, the report calls on SSOs to develop more explicit policies to avoid patent holdup and royalty-stacking, ensure that licensing commitments carry over to new owners of the patents incorporated in standards, and limit injunctions for infringement of patents with those licensing commitments. The report recommends government measures to increase the transparency of patent ownership and use of standards information to improve patent quality and to reduce conflicts of laws across countries.

. . . the book is a well-presented collection of scholarly articles on diverse, stimulating topics. . . The levels of explanation and detail vary from chapter-to-chapter and so the reader will probably find the book most helpful to consult for key topics of interest. . . The breadth of the book means that students, academics and interested practitioners should find areas that will appeal. Frederick Chen, European Intellectual Property Review Together the essays cover some of the most topical issues in IP and related fields, and should therefore be of immense interest and value to any serious student of the subject. The Commonwealth Lawyer It is an extremely thought-provoking book, crammed full of excellent papers which are genuinely original, and push forward the boundaries of their retrospective topics. . . the book is without doubt worth purchasing for anyone interested in IP theory, pharmaceuticals or traditional knowledge. . . the papers are of incredibly good quality. . . a few of those alone make the book worth purchasing. My impromptu rating system will therefore award it 5 out of 5 stars. James Griffin, Communications Law This book covers an extensive range of critical issues in modern Intellectual Property (IP) law under three broad headings: Technology, Market Freedom and the Public Domain; Intellectual Property and International Trade; Traditional Knowledge, Technology and Resources. Uniting contributions at the cutting edge of IP research, the authors, all former or current members and associates of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London, address a number of diverse topics in relation to existing copyright, trademark and patent law. They examine political and juridical issues in fields such as geographical indications and traditional knowledge, agriculture and information technology, pharmaceuticals and access to medicines, human rights and IP strategy. The book will appeal to academics, researchers, students, and to practitioners concerned with all areas of intellectual property.

As technological developments multiply around the globeâ€"even as the patenting of human genes comes under serious discussionâ€"nations, companies, and researchers find themselves in conflict over intellectual property rights (IPRs). Now, an international group of experts presents the first multidisciplinary look at IPRs in an age of explosive growth in science and technology. This thought-provoking volume offers an update on current international IPR negotiations and includes case studies on software, computer chips, optoelectronics, and biotechnologyâ€"areas characterized by high development cost and easy reproducibility. The volume covers these and other issues: Modern economic theory as a basis for approaching international IPRs. U.S. intellectual property practices versus those in Japan, India, the European Community, and the developing and newly industrializing countries. Trends in science and technology and how they affect IPRs. Pros and cons of a uniform international IPRs regime versus a system reflecting national differences.

Introduction -- Intellectual property rights basics -- Global intellectual property holdings -- Contribution of intellectual property to U.S. economy -- The organized structure of IPR protection -- U.S. trade law -- Issues for Congress.

Although it is common knowledge that the compliance of developing countries with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has become a serious stumbling block in the WTO agenda, the underlying reasons why this is so have not been dispassionately analyzed until the appearance of this book. Here, for the first time, is a thorough and secure foundation on which international trade lawyers and business people can build a global intellectual property regime that is both productive and fair. The implementation of the TRIPS regime with its enormous effect on national and global strategies for healthcare, agriculture, and the environment, among other crucial sectors of the world economy is clearly among the most critical projects currently under way in the field of international relations. As a former TRIPS negotiator for India, Jayashree Watal brings great authority to her account of the benefits and pitfalls of TRIPS compliance for developing countries. She provides a detailed understanding of how TRIPS was negotiated at the Uruguay Round, how various countries have implemented it so far, and how the WTO monitors compliance. She reveals how the WTO dispute settlement process has worked to date in matters involving TRIPS, and how it is likely to deal with new issues that arise. Most importantly, she explains how developing countries can interpret TRIPS to their best advantage, and how to ensure that the `constructive ambiguity' that characterizes the agreement remains flexible.

This book is meant to provide a ... collection of commentaries on the topic of intellectual property. [The] goal has been to bring together ... influential writings on patent, copyright, trademark and design protection, beginning with early material from the seventeenth century and continuing into the contemporary law review literature. -Pref.

The series of papers in this publication were commissioned from renowned international economists from all regions. They review the existing empirical literature on six selected themes relating to the economics of intellectual property, identify the key research questions, point out research gaps and explore possible avenues for future research.

The trade-investment-service-intellectual property (IP) nexus remains at the heart of economic development and the main features of which are global value chains (GVCs) and digitalisation. The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) has become a critical issue not only for advanced economies but also for emerging markets. This edited volume contributes to the debates on IPR protection and economic development from the perspective of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states. The book provides insights into the mechanism and evidence on how effective IPR protection will increase economic and social welfare via promoting innovation activities and providing incentives to diffuse knowledge and transfer technologies. Written by economists and lawyers from the region, these experts share their latest findings and thoughts on how countries in Southeast Asia have been progressively improving IPR protection and increasing the interoperability of different IPR regimes through regional cooperation to facilitate business operations in the context of digital transformation.

One of the alleged benefits of the recent global movement to strengthen intellectual property rights (IPRs) is that such reforms accelerate transfers of technology between countries. Branstetter, Fisman, and Foley examine how technology transfer among U.S. multinational firms changes in response to a series of IPR reforms undertaken by 12 countries over the 1982-99 period. Their analysis of detailed firm-level data reveal that royalty payments for intangibles transferred to affiliates increase at the time of reforms, as do affiliate research and development (R & D) expenditures and total levels of foreign patent applications. Increases in royalty payments and R & D expenditures are more than 20 percent larger among affiliates of parent companies that use U.S. patents more extensively prior to reform and therefore are expected to value IPR reform most. This paper--a product of Trade, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the global impact of stronger intellectual property rights.