In recent years the world has moved sharply toward successive strengthening – and harmonization – of intellectual property protection. There has emerged, at an unprecedented level, both a globalized regime of private rights in information and new foundations for a basic international system of innovation. This new system will have profound implications for the nature of such processes as innovation, technology transfer, market competition, and economic development. It also raises essential and sometimes disturbing questions about potential impacts on the ability of governments to provide critical public goods, both within and across countries. Such goods include public health, nutrition, education, environmental protection, cultural identity, and other elements of social importance that must rely increasingly on the exercise of private rights over technical inputs.

It is possible that the globalized intellectual property regime will improve markets for trading information internationally by encouraging invention and resolving inherent failures in technology transactions. It is also conceivable that the system will throw up high roadblocks in the path of follow-on innovation, competition, and the attainment of public goods. These questions are deep and complex and require sustained analysis.

The clear difficulties of this task constitute one of the main reasons that the editors of this volume decided to organize the Conference on International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime in April 2003 at Duke University.