Global Technological Integration, Intellectual Property Rights, and Competition Law: Some Introductory Comments
12 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2013
Date Written: 1996
Abstract
In this Symposium we view global technological integration from two public policy vantage points. One, the international intellectual property rights regime, is concerned with creating and protecting rights and the incentives associated with them. The other, competition law, seeks to protect the process of competition from restraints. If the normative framework for international trade and investment is to be coherent, these two legal projects should be coordinated; each should operate so as to support — or at least not interfere with — the other’s effectiveness. Yet the current state of our knowledge and thinking about these issues does not allow us to assess with any confidence how the international expansion of property rights may affect competition on the international level.
Our central objective here is to contribute to fashioning useful and analytically sound perspectives on the intersection of these two legal regimes, and in these introductory comments I sketch some factors to consider in fashioning a competition law perspective on the evolving intellectual property rights system.
Keywords: competition law, antitrust law, international law, intellectual property rights, technology, global technological integration
JEL Classification: K19, K21, K33, K42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation