Intellectual Property Free Trade Agreements And The United Kingdom

Examining how trade agreements are interpreted both in trade tribunals and in the United Kingdom, this innovative book provides a well-rounded exploration of the numerous UK free trade agreements, including the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and their legal and policy implications for intellectual property. Providing a detailed assessment of the continuing role of EU standards in the UK, Phillip Johnson highlights how the UK has played an active role in shaping EU intellectual property law and policy. He explores the extent to which the UK's "new" trade agreements are tied to existing EU law and how this will preserve those standards in the UK, and how this might been received both nationally and globally. An extensive range of critical issues is covered, including copyright, patents, designs, trade marks, border control and technology transfer as well as featuring a calendar of EU laws which are replicated in the UK's current free trade agreements. This authoritative book will be an important source of reference for academics and practitioners seeking to understand the role of intellectual property law in UK and EU free trade agreements, as well as scholars and students of intellectual property, trade laws, and European Law.

Examining how trade agreements are interpreted both in trade tribunals and in the United Kingdom, this innovative book provides a well-rounded exploration of the numerous UK free trade agreements, including the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and their legal and policy implications for intellectual property.

This book is highly topical. The shift from the multilateral WTO negotiations to bilateral and regional Free Trade Agreements has been going on for some time, but it is bound to accelerate after the WTO Doha round of negotiations is now widely regarded as a failure. However, there is a particular regional angle to this topic as well. After concluding that further progress in the Doha round was unlikely, Pacific Rim nations recently have progressed with the negotiations of a greatly expanded Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that includes industrialised economies and developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, recently emerged economies such as Singapore, but also several developing countries in Asia and Latin America such as Malaysia and Vietnam. US and EU led efforts to conclude FTAs with Asia-Pacific nations are also bound to accelerate again, after a temporary slowdown in the negotiations following the change of government in the United States and the expiry of the US President’s fast-track negotiation authority. The book will provide an assessment of these dynamics in the world’s fastest growing region. It will look at the IP chapters from a legal perspective, but also put the developments into a socio-economic and political context. Many agreements in fact are concluded because of this context rather than for purely economic reasons or to achieve progress in fields like IP law. The structure of the book follows an outline that groups countries into interest alliances according to their respective IP priorities. This ranges from the driving forces of the EU, US and Japan, via Asia-Pacific resource-rich but IP poor economies such as Australia and New Zealand, recently emerged economies with strong IP systems such as Singapore and Korea to leading developing countries such as China and India and ‘second tier industrializing economies’ such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Intellectual Property and Free Trade Agreements presents the papers of the sixth IP conference organised by the Macau Institute of European Studies (IEEM) on intellectual property law and the economic challenges for Asia. The objective of the conferences is to provide up-to-date information on developments in global intellectual property law and policy and their impact on regional economic and cultural development. The current volume deals with the implications of free trade agreements for the international framework of intellectual property law, a topic of enormous economic and legal importance given the increasing number of free trade agreements in force or under negotiation.

This book will provide readers with a structured account of the relevant enforcement procedures and substantive patent law in each country, enabling a quick compare and contrast to be made between countries and the identification of relevant issues.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) traditionally have been matters of national concern. Individual nation states have developed IPR regimes reflecting their domestic needs and priorities. Over time, intellectual property protection and enforcement have come to the forefront as a key international trade issue for the United States, figuring prominently in the multilateral trade policy arena and in regional and bilateral U.S. free trade agreements (FTAs). This book reflects the Administration's resolve to encourage and maintain adequate and effective IPR protection and enforcement world-wide. It identifies a wide range of concerns, including troubling "indigenous innovation" policies that may unfairly disadvantage U.S. rights holders in China, the continuing challenges of copyright piracy over the Internet in countries such as Canada, Italy, and Russia, and other ongoing, systemic IPR enforcement issues presented in many trading partners around the world.

​​​​ ​This book focuses on a new generation of bilateral and regional agreements negotiated by the EU with developing countries and which include intellectual property (IP) provisions setting standards exceeding those of the TRIPS Agreement. The contributions critically analyse the IP standards found in these agreements; their potential for reforming the international IP system; the implications for the multilateral IP system and other areas of international law such as human rights; and the often neglected topic of implementing the IP obligations in these agreements.​