Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- 22 Issues Posed by a World Patent System
- 23 Intellectual Property Arbitrage: How Foreign Rules Can Affect Domestic Protections
- 24 An Agenda for Radical Intellectual Property Reform
- Comment: Whose Rules, Whose Needs? Balancing Public and Private Interests
- 25 Diffusion and Distribution: The Impacts on Poor Countries of Technological Enforcement within the Biotechnology Sector
- 26 Equitable Sharing of Benefits from Biodiversity-Based Innovation: Some Reflections under the Shadow of a Neem Tree
- 27 The Critical Role of Competition Law in Preserving Public Goods in Conflict with Intellectual Property Rights
- 28 Expansionist Intellectual Property Protection and Reductionist Competition Rules: A TRIPS Perspective
- 29 Can Antitrust Policy Protect the Global Commons from the Excesses of IPRs?
- Comment I: Competition Law as a Means of Containing Intellectual Property Rights
- 30 “Minimal” Standards for Patent-Related Antitrust Law under TRIPS
- Comment II: Competitive Baselines for Intellectual Property Systems
- 31 WTO Dispute Settlement: Of Sovereign Interests, Private Rights, and Public Goods
- 32 The Economics of International Trade Agreements and Dispute Settlement with Intellectual Property Rights
- 33 Intellectual Property Rights and Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization
- 34 WTO Dispute Resolution and the Preservation of the Public Domain of Science under International Law
- 35 Recognizing Public Goods in WTO Dispute Settlement: Who Participates? Who Decides? The Case of TRIPS and Pharmaceutical Patents Protection
- Index
33 - Intellectual Property Rights and Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- 22 Issues Posed by a World Patent System
- 23 Intellectual Property Arbitrage: How Foreign Rules Can Affect Domestic Protections
- 24 An Agenda for Radical Intellectual Property Reform
- Comment: Whose Rules, Whose Needs? Balancing Public and Private Interests
- 25 Diffusion and Distribution: The Impacts on Poor Countries of Technological Enforcement within the Biotechnology Sector
- 26 Equitable Sharing of Benefits from Biodiversity-Based Innovation: Some Reflections under the Shadow of a Neem Tree
- 27 The Critical Role of Competition Law in Preserving Public Goods in Conflict with Intellectual Property Rights
- 28 Expansionist Intellectual Property Protection and Reductionist Competition Rules: A TRIPS Perspective
- 29 Can Antitrust Policy Protect the Global Commons from the Excesses of IPRs?
- Comment I: Competition Law as a Means of Containing Intellectual Property Rights
- 30 “Minimal” Standards for Patent-Related Antitrust Law under TRIPS
- Comment II: Competitive Baselines for Intellectual Property Systems
- 31 WTO Dispute Settlement: Of Sovereign Interests, Private Rights, and Public Goods
- 32 The Economics of International Trade Agreements and Dispute Settlement with Intellectual Property Rights
- 33 Intellectual Property Rights and Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization
- 34 WTO Dispute Resolution and the Preservation of the Public Domain of Science under International Law
- 35 Recognizing Public Goods in WTO Dispute Settlement: Who Participates? Who Decides? The Case of TRIPS and Pharmaceutical Patents Protection
- Index
Summary
ABSTRACT
With the advent of the TRIPS Agreement, international disputes about governmental regulation of intellectual property rights (IPRs) are now subject to adjudication within the WTO dispute resolution mechanism. The standard model used by economists to explain dispute settlement procedures is misleading, for the process is not about preventing countries from exercising market power. Rather, the system is designed to resolve political market failures arising within countries that would be harmful to market access for foreign firms. These issues arise particularly in the context of intellectual property rights (IPRs), which may be used as cross-market bargaining chips. This possibility is illustrated by the petition of Ecuador to suspend concessions in this area for European firms in the context of the EU – Banana case. The scope of such an approach remains unclear, and there are many fundamental questions deserving close analysis. In this chapter, I make several basic points relating to the economics of IPRs and to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) dispute settlement process. These comments underscore the fact that the injection of IPRs into the global trading system raises a new dimension for settling disputes.
The economist's conventional view of trade agreements
The prevalent view among international trade theorists is that trade agreements exist to deal with terms-of-trade externalities between countries. Specifically, when such large nations or aggregations as the United States and the European Union implement business standards or undertake regulatory actions, they may have the secondary effect of restricting trade and worsening market-access opportunities for exporting countries.
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- International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology Under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime , pp. 852 - 860Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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