Law Commons^™

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 …

Intellectual Property In The Twenty-First Century: Will The Developing Countries Lead Or Follow?, Jerome H. Reichman

Faculty Scholarship

This article continues the author's contributions on the subject of intellectual property protection in developing countries, and focuses on how those developing countries with growing technological prowess should accommodate their own national systems of innovation to the worldwide intellectual property regime emerging in the post-TRIPS period, with a view to maximizing global economic welfare in the foreseeable future.

Is Bayh-Dole Good For Developing Countries?: Lessons From The Us Experience, Arti K. Rai, Jerome H. Reichman, Robert Weissman, Amy Kapczynski, Robert Cook-Deegan, Bhaven N. Sampat, Anthony D. So

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, countries from China and Brazil to Malaysia and South Africa have passed laws promoting the patenting of publicly funded research, and a similar proposal is under legislative consideration in India. These initiatives are modeled in part on the United States Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Bayh-Dole (BD) encouraged American universities to acquire patents on inventions resulting from government-funded research and to issue exclusive licenses to private firms, on the assumption that exclusive licensing creates incentives to commercialize these inventions. A broader hope of BD, and the initiatives emulating it, was that patenting and licensing of public sector research would spur …

Using Liability Rules To Stimulate Local Innovation In Developing Countries: Application To Traditional Knowledge, Jerome H. Reichman, Tracey Lewis

Faculty Scholarship

When economists speak of an underlying legal structure that imposes an "absolute permission" requirement on access to, and use of, knowledge goods protected by intellectual property rights (IPRs), they typically have in mind the domestic patent and copyright laws. Under these and related intellectual property regimes, one cannot normally make use of a protected invention or creative work of authorship for specified purposes and for limited periods of time without prior authorization of the rights holder, typically in the form of a license.

When economists speak of liability rules, in contrast, they envision an underlying legal structure that permits third …