Patent And Trade Disparities In Developing Countries

In Patent and Trade Disparities in Developing Countries, Srividhya Ragavan examines the interaction between trade and intellectual property regimes (using the patent regime in India as the focal point) in an integrated developmental framework to determine how sustainable economic growth can be achieved in developing countries.

Offers comprehensive and analytical literature surveys of the central questions regarding the linkages between intellectual property protection, international trade and investment, and economic growth. This book covers such questions as policy coordination in IPR, dispute resolution, and markets for technology and technology transfer.

International policies toward protecting intellectual property rights have seen profound changes over the past two decades. Rules on how to protect patents, copyright, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property have become a standard component of international trade agreements. Most significantly, during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1986-94), members of what is today the World Trade Organization (WTO) concluded the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which sets out minimum standards of protection that most of the world's economies have to respect. How will developing countries fare in this new international environment? Intellectual Property and Development brings together empirical research that assesses the effects of changing intellectual property regimes on various measures of economic and social performance - ranging from international trade, foreign investment and competition, to innovation and access to new technologies. The studies presented point to an important development dimension to the protection of intellectual property. But a one-size fits all approach to intellectual property is unlikely to work. There is need to adjust intellectual property norms to domestic needs, taking into account developing countries' capacity to innovate, technological needs, and institutional capabilities. In addition, governments need to consider a range of complementary policies to maximize the benefits and reduce the costs of reformed intellectual property regulations. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international law, particularly in the area of intellectual property rights, international trade, and public policy.

This study discusses the opportunities and challenges offered by patents to foster technology transfer from government funded research institutions in developing countries. It presents a review of policy frameworks and recent policy changes aimed to foster academic patenting and technology transfer in low- and middle-income countries. It then analyzes patenting activities by universities and public research organizations and compares these trends with respect to high-income countries. This analysis is complemented with an assessment of the current state of patenting and technology commercialization practices in a selected group of technology transfer offices.

THE INTERNATIONAL PATENT-LEGISLATION AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES A major concern today in many fields of international cooperation is the development of the nonindustrialized part of the world. This was not always so. Until fairly recently contacts among States were basi cally limited to diplomatic intercourse. The concept of State sovereign ty naturally led to the application of the principle of legal reciprocity between States. In the few areas outside diplomatic relations where international cooperation developed during the last century the same principle of legal reciprocity was applied. The cooperation that did take place was mostly among a limited number of Western States. In case countries outside this group wished to participate they were free to do so on accepting the traditional standards for such cooperation. Though a few countries, which today would have been or are known as develop ing countries, did join in various schemes of international cooperation, the majority of them remained outside. Moreover, a large number of States, which today are known as developing, did not exist as sovereign States at the time. One of the areas in which a system of international cooperation was set up in the latter part of the nineteenth century was that of patent protection.

This book proposes an approach to the patent-competition interface for developing countries. It puts forward a theoretical framework after canvassing relevant policy considerations and examines the many reasons why patent protection is not essential for generating innovation incentives in developing countries. These include the tendency of the patent system to overcompensate innovators, the availability of other appropriation mechanisms for innovators to monetize their innovations, and the lack of appropriate technological capacity in many developing countries to take advantage of the incentives generated by the patent system. It also argues that developing countries with a small population need not pay heed to the impact of their patent system on the incentives of foreign innovators. It then proposes a classification of developing countries into production countries, technology adaptation countries, and proto-innovation countries and argues that dynamic efficiency considerations take on different meanings for developing countries depending on their technological capacities. For the vast majority of developing countries bereft of meaningful innovation capacity, foreign technology transfer is the main vehicle for technological progress. The chief dynamic policy consideration for these countries is hence incentives for technology transfer instead of innovation incentives. There are three main means of voluntary technology transfer: importation of technological goods, foreign direct investment, and technology licensing. Competition law regulation of patent exploitation practices interacts with these three means of technology transfer in different ways and an appropriate approach to the patent-competition interface for these countries needs to take these into account. Distilling all these considerations, the book proposes a development stage-specific approach to the patent-competition interface for developing countries. The approach is then applied to a number of patent exploitation practices, including unilateral refusal to deal, patent tying, excessive pricing for pharmaceuticals, reverse payment settlements, and restrictive licensing practices.

Intellectual property rights such as patents can reduce access to knowledge in genetics, health, agriculture, education and information technology, particularly for people in developing countries. Global Intellectual Property Rights shows how the new global rules of intellectual property have been the product of the strategic behaviour of multinationals, rather than democratic dialogue. The final section of the book suggests strategies aimed at developing more flexible standard for poor countries, and for keeping knowledge in the intellectual commons.

Similarly, almost all of these regimes provide generalized solutions that developing countries tend to denounce as ill-fitting.