International Trade in Intellectual Property: The Emerging GATT Regime

ERIC WOLFHARD

ABSTRACT

Maintaining the international flow and distribution of benefits from intellectual property requires acknowledgment of a fact central to contemporary economic life: technology respects no borders. Yet those who import and export intellectual property must adhere to rules of international trade which are premised upon the existence of national boundaries. Trade-related aspects of intellectual property have thus become one of the most controversial issues at the Uruguay Round. Utilizing an economic framework of analysis and recent developments in cooperation theory, the evolution of intellectual property as a trade issue is sketched. The author finds that a trade-based response to intellectual property is an inevitable consequence of interdependence and structural changes occurring in the global economy. After explaining why the prevailing regime impedes and distorts trade, reduces incentives to innovate, and diminishes welfare in its broadest sense, the author analyzes American, Indian, and Canadian reform proposals. He concludes with a discussion of the possibilities for designing an optimal regime under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Citation: (1991) 49(1) U.T. Fac. L. Rev. 106.
Copyright © 1991. University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review.
All rights reserved.