TRIPS does not lay down rules on parallel imports. Its provisions, however, do give states the discretion to apply competition rules to the exercise of intellectual property rights. The indeterminacies of competition law and its application mean that intellectual property owners lack objective...

The existence of parallel imports (PI) raises a number of interesting policy and strategic questions, which are the subject of this survey article. For example, parallel trade is essentially arbitrage within policy-integrated markets of IPR-protected goods, which may have different prices across...