Economics

Intellectual Property

  • Intellectual Property
    Reforming U.S. Patent Policy
    Overview The conversation on American competitiveness is often intertwined with the conversation on innovation. The liberalization of trade and the increasing influence of emerging markets such as China and India have meant that U.S. innovation is now competing globally. This global competition has raised awareness and concerns not only that our trading partners are lax on patent enforcement, but also that our patent system may not be optimally suited to compete on the global economic stage. In this Council Special Report, Keith E. Maskus offers a fair, thoughtful, and at times counterintuitive account of this issue. He recognizes the importance of patent protection for innovation but also warns against blind adherence to the mantra that more protection will necessarily produce more innovation. He highlights the numerous friction points in the patent system and recommends policy options to smooth them out and to keep our patent system competitive. While acknowledging concerns about patent infringement in emerging markets, he expresses deep skepticism of U.S. efforts to harmonize patent standards through trade negotiations. In its place, he proposes a grand bargain in which the developed world requires emerging markets to enforce patents in exchange for agreeing to relax efforts to tighten global patent standards. Part of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Series on American Competitiveness.
    Council Special Report by Keith E. Maskus November 15, 2006 Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies
  • Intellectual Property
    Pirates on the High Seas
    Overview U.S. trade is increasingly dependent on high-technology and innovation-intensive goods. Companies like Microsoft, Merck, Tommy Hilfiger, or Disney represent very different parts of the U.S. industrial base. But they share a reliance on innovation and export and, therefore, an interest in ensuring adequate intellectual property protection for their products worldwide. Piracy is a scourge because it affects the symbols of U.S. economic strength and greatest hope for the future--modern information-intensive industries. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the United States formulated an aggressive external intellectual properties rights policy. Dozens of bilateral agreements were signed with countries to increase the standards of intellectual property protection abroad. The crown jewel of the U.S. policy was the ratification of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Intellectual property protection, once a purely domestic issue, became a matter of trade policy. This paper examines the challenges facing the United States as it tries to revitalize its intellectual property rights policy. The new WTO trade rules and the lassitude--domestic and international--following the last, long trade round are impeding the formulation of an effective policy. Intellectual property disputes, however, continue to surface as new technologies create new challenges and as monitoring and enforcement problems recede further behind borders.
    Report by Benedicte Bénédicte Callan January 1, 1998