Economic growth across the globe increasingly depends on knowledge-based industries. As a consequence Intellectual Property Rights, or IPRs, are becoming increasingly integral to trade agreements. With the stagnation of the Doha Round the prospect of new global standards, to augment those...

Under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) all parties to the agreement are allowed flexibility in issuing licenses for manufacturing pharmaceutical drugs, in line with their public policy objectives. The licenses may be issued under certain conditions,...

Although Intellectual Property rights are classified as private rights of the title holders of intellectual and trade creations, the ultimately expansion of their infringements has revealed big concerns not only from the point of view of violating private rights, but also affecting human health,...

The paper departs from two cases dealing with the impacts of the global trade regime rules, implemented with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its assembled agreements, in domestic regulation in Brazil, and the succeeding alternative development strategies undertaken by the...

This paper was prepared by the author for the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. It was initially published in the online edition in 2009, and in 2012 appeared in the hard copy bound volumes. The paper describes the various forms of intellectual property, the international...

Can U.S. patent law help American businesses compete in global markets? In early 2011, President Barack Obama argued that, to obtain economic prosperity, the United States must “out-innovate . . . the rest of the world,” and that patent reform is a “critical dimension[]” of this...

Government trade ministers arrived at that the WTO Seattle Ministerial Conference in late November 1999 without preliminary agreement on the future course of multilateral trade negotiations, and they departed without reaching consensus on a new WTO agenda. There was ample warning that the WTO...