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The Surprising Benefits To Developing Countries Of Linking International Trade And Intellectual Property, Rachel Brewster
The Surprising Benefits To Developing Countries Of Linking International Trade And Intellectual Property, Rachel Brewster
Faculty Scholarship
The World Trade Organization's Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement is controversial, requiring WTO members to establish a host of domestic institutions to support intellectual property rights, including substantive laws creating rights and a host of enforcement procedures. Trade scholars and development advocates frequently criticize the agreement as economically harmful to developing countries. This Article does not argue that the TRIPS Agreement is beneficial for developing states, but highlights how the agreement has produced some surprising benefits over the last decade and a half. First, the TRIPS Agreement's requirement that developing states make the domestic enforcement of intellectual property rules …
Disintermediating Avarice: A Legal Framework For Commercially Sustainable Microfinance, Steven L. Schwarcz
Disintermediating Avarice: A Legal Framework For Commercially Sustainable Microfinance, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
Although microfinance is emerging as a key tool to alleviate poverty, the need for microfinance lending vastly exceeds the amount of funds that can be raised from charitable donors. Commercial bank lending is supplementing donor money, but microfinance loans made by banks are extremely expensive and sometimes even exploitive. This article examines how innovative legal structures can enable microfinance loans to be funded directly from lower-cost, and virtually limitless, capital market sources by removing, or “disintermediating,” the need for a bank intermediary. In that context, the article identifies and attempts to resolve the resulting law-and-business issues of first impression and …