The Implementation Game: The TRIPS Agreement and the Global Politics of Intellectual Property Reform in Developing Countries

Abstract

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is the centrepiece of the global system of rules, institutions, and practices governing the ownership and flow of knowledge, technology, and other intellectual assets. During the TRIPS negotiations, industry lobbyists persuaded the world’s economic powers to wage a protracted campaign against developing countries opposed to the deal. Developing countries protested that the Agreement would consolidate corporate monopolies over the ownership of ideas, exacerbate the north-south technology gap, and perversely speed the transfer of capital from developing to developed countries. The conclusion of TRIPS represents a revolution in the history of IP protection. This paper, which forms the introduction to The Implementation Game: The TRIPS Agreement and the Global Politics of Intellectual Property Reform in Developing Countries, provides an overview to the first scholarly effort to explain the variation in TRIPS implementation across the full spectrum of the WTO’s developing country members, almost a third of which are least developed countries (LDCs).

Keywords: TRIPS, WIPO, intellectual property, reform, governance, patent, copyright, implementation, compliance, politics, developing countries, development agenda

JEL Classification: F13, F53, F53, F59, K33, L38, L31, O19, O33, O34