By Keith Maskus ,  the Institute for International Economics, August 2000

"one of the best books ever written about intellectual property rights (IPRs). Maskus's book takes us a long way from your everyday faith-based approach to global IPRs, and anyone embarking down the trail he blazes had better fasten their safety belts."

Over the past 15 years, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have moved from an arcane area of legal analysis and a policy backwater to the forefront of global economic policymaking. In the 1990s dozens of countries unilaterally strengthened their laws and regulations in this area, and many others are poised to do likewise. At the multilateral level, the successful conclusion of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) elevates the protection and enforcement of IPRs to the level of inviolable international commitment.

The new global system emerging from IPRs comes with benefits as well as costs. Their increasing importance raises international economic policy questions that evoke impassioned and exaggerated claims from both advocates and opponents of stronger property rights in information. In the first economic assessment of the effects of stronger international IPRs in one volume, Keith E. Maskus examines these competing claims through a comprehensive analysis of the economic impacts of extended international protection and partial harmonization of IPRs. He brings together recent studies of various aspects of the issue and performs new quantitative and qualitative analyses. He presents findings that will be applied to a number of important policy questions on the very new phenomenon of IPRs.

Read Full Book Online (Divided PDFs)

Book Contents (PDFs):

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: The Issue is Deeper than American Movies 128.7KB

2. A Road Map for the Trips Ahead 122.4KB

3. The Economics of Intellectual Property Rights and Globalization: Dancing the Dual Distortion 320.6KB

4. The Global Effects of Intellectual Property Rights: Measuring What Cannot Be Seen 320.2KB

5. Intellectual Property Rights and Economics Development: Patents, Growth, and Growing Pains 188.1KB 6. The Global Policy Framework: Intellectual Property Rights and Wrongs 185.4KB

7. Benefiting From Intellectual Property Protection: Take the Medicine But Get Some Exercise Too 216.5KB

8. Conclusions and Policy Recommedations: Are We There Yet? 76.3KB

References

Index

About the Author:

Keith E. Maskus, Visiting Fellow, is Professor of Economics and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has been visiting economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and the U.S. State Department. He is a frequent consultant to the World Bank, UNCTAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. He has contributed chapters on intellectual property negotiations to two previous Institute books-Completing the Uruguay Round: A Results-Oriented Approach to the GATT Trade Negotiations, Jeffrey J. Schott editor (1990) and Launching New Global Trade Talks: An Action Agenda, Jeffrey J.Schott, editor (1998)-and is the author of Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy (1999).

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