Turning Trips on Its Head: An "IP Cross Retaliation" Model for Developing Countries

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamnad Basheer
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Suspension Model ◽  
The U.S

The biblical David vs. Goliath paradigm plays out very frequently in international trade disputes. In 2003, a tiny island state, Antigua and Barbuda (hereafter Antigua) took on the United States (hereafter U.S.) in a WTO (World Trade Organization) dispute, alleging that the U.S. violated the General Agreement on Trade in Services (hereafter GATS) obligations by effectively foreclosing its borders to overseas internet gambling services. It won at both the panel and the appellate levels. However, to this date, it has been unable to secure compliance by the U.S.This paper considers “cross retaliation" by suspending intellectual property rights under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (hereafter TRIPS) as a viable remedy for developing countries such as Antigua that often find themselves at the receiving end of WTO inconsistent measures maintained by countries that are economically more powerful.Towards this end, it proposes a “Tiered IP suspension model," where certain kinds of Intellectual Property (hereafter IP) are targeted first for suspension before others, depending on the ease of objectively ascertaining the harm caused by the unauthorized use of such IP and/or the potential to induce compliance by the defaulting state. Illustratively, copyrights over sound recordings that have established rates for public performance are targeted first. If working with this tier of IP subject matter does not yield desired results, then the complaining state moves on to other IP where it is relatively more difficult to compute the loss caused to the IP owner (such as pharmaceutical patents) but which may be a more powerful tool to induce compliance. Such a model could be useful for a large number of developing countries, such as India and Brazil, that often find that, despite WTO victories, scofflaw states such as the U.S. and EU fail to comply. Towards this end, this paper offers a very concrete “development" oriented international trade law remedy.

Power and Inequality in Megaregulation: The TPP Model

2019 ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
B. S. Chimni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Matrix

Neo-Marxist approaches have begun again to exercise influence in contemporary critiques of globalization. This chapter sketches a transnational and national class-based analysis of international trade-regulatory agreements, using the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as the representative ideal type. With this framework, it looks at the implications of the TPP model for developing countries in the area of foreign investment and intellectual property rights in the matrix of the recent evolution of these two regimes. It further examines strategies available to the United States and India as their different domestic class constellations struggle over the countries’ political positioning towards economic globalization.

The Protection of Intellectual Property in the Global Economy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamal Saggi ◽  
Olena Ivus
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World

Longstanding international frictions over uneven levels of protection granted to intellectual property rights (IPR) in different parts of the world culminated in 1995 in the form of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)—a multilateral trade agreement that all member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are obligated to follow. This landmark agreement was controversial from the start since it required countries with dramatically different economic and technological capabilities to abide by essentially the same rules and regulations with respect to IPRs, with some temporary leeway granted to developing and least developed countries. As one might expect, developing countries objected to the agreement on philosophical and practical grounds while developed countries, especially the United States, championed it strongly. Over the years, a vast and rich economics literature has emerged that helps understand this international divide. More specifically, several fundamental issues related to the protection of IPRs in the global economy have been addressed: are IPRs trade-related? Do the incentives for patent protection of an open economy differ from those of a closed one and, if so, why? What is the rationale for international coordination over national patent policies? Why do developed and developing countries have such radically different views regarding the protection of IPRs? What is the level of empirical support underlying the major arguments for and against the TRIPS-mandated strengthening of IPRs in the world economy? Can the core obligations of the TRIPS Agreement as well as the flexibilities it contains be justified on the basis of economic logic? We discuss the key conclusions that can be drawn from decades of rigorous theoretical and empirical research and also offer some suggestions for future work.

International Seminar – Contributions to the Development Agenda on Intellectual Property Rights

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Celia Castro ◽  
Maria Beatriz Amorim Bohrer
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent System ◽  
International Seminar ◽  
Development Agenda

TRIPS as it stands is against the interests of developing countries, and needsreform. In developing their own patent law, developing countries need to recognizethat there is now near consensus among informed observers that patentlaw and practice have, in some cases, overshot, and need to be reformed. Thatis the burden of the recent NAS/NRC report on “A Patent System for the 21stCentury.

Protecting User Interfaces

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Shemtov
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Graphical User Interfaces ◽  
Unfair Competition ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights Protection

This chapter examines the scope of protection to which graphical user interfaces may be eligible under various intellectual property rights: namely, trade marks, unfair-competition laws, design rights, copyright, and patents. It first considers the extent of copyright protection over a software product’s ‘look-and-feel’ elements, with particular emphasis on graphical user interfaces protection under US and EU laws. It then discusses trade-mark, trade-dress, and unfair-competition protection for graphical user interfaces, along with intellectual property rights protection for design patents and registered designs. Finally, it describes the patent protection for graphical user interfaces in the United States and at the European Patent Office.

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