TECHNOPOLICY BRIEF NO. 1

1. How Important were Strong Private Intellectual Property
Rights in the Development of Developed Countries?
Evolution of National Intellectual Property Rights Regime
In modern debate on intellectual property rights, we are frequently toldthat without patents and other private intellectual property rights, developed
countries would not have been able to generate the technologies that madethem prosperous. For example, the US-based National Law Center forInter-American Free Trade claims that “the historical record in the industrializedcountries, which began as developing countries, demonstrates that intellectual
property protection has been one of the most powerful instruments for
economic development, export growth, and the diffusion of new technologies,
art and culture”(1997. (Strong Intellectual Property Protection Benefits
the Developing Countries––http://www.natlaw.com)
However, this kind of statement cannot be further from the truth, as theintellectual property regimes in the developed countries were highly
deficient by “modern” standards that are now asked of the developing
countries.
The first patent system was used in Venice in 1474. British patent law
came into being in 1623, while France adopted its patent law in 1791, theUSA in 1793, and Austria in 1794. Most other developed countries
established their patent laws between 1790 and 1850 and establishedother elements of their intellectual property rights (henceforth IPR) regimes,
such as copyright laws (first introduced in Britain in 1709) and trademark
laws (first introduced in Britain in 1862), in the second half of the 19th
century.
However, all of these IPR regimes were highly “deficient” by modern
standards.1 Patent systems in many countries lacked disclosure requirements,
incurred very high costs in filing and processing applications, and afforded
inadequate protection to the patentees. Few of them allowed patents on
chemical and pharmaceutical substances (as opposed to the processes) –a practice that has continued well into the last decades of the 20th century
in many countries (and was a major bone of contention in the TRIPS
agreement).2 Especially, these laws accorded only very inadequate protectionof the IPR of foreign citizens. In most countries, Britain included (before

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the 1852 reform), the Netherlands, Austria, and France, patenting ofimported inventions by their nationals was often explicitly allowed. In
the USA, before the 1836 overhaul of the patent law, patents were granted
without any proof of originality, thus enabling the patenting of imported
technologies.
Also important to note is that there were countries that became welldeveloped without patents. The Netherlands, although it introduced apatent law in 1817, abolished it in 1869 and did not introduce one until
1912. Switzerland did not have a patent system until 1907. The 1907
Swiss patent law still had many exclusions, especially the refusal to grant
patents on chemical substances (as opposed to patents on chemical processes).
It was only in 1954 that the Swiss patent law became comparable to thoseof other advanced countries, although chemical substances remained
unpatentable until 1978.
Despite the absence of patent law, the Dutch economy performed quite
respectably in terms of innovation. During their “patentless” period, theSwiss were one of the leading innovators in the world, coming up withworld-famous inventions in areas like textile machinery, the steam engine,and food processing (e.g, milk chocolate, instant soup, stock [bouillon]
cubes and baby foods). Also, there is no evidence that the absence of apatent system worked as a deterrent to FDI (as it is often claimed to bethese days). There were even some important cases, especially in foodprocessing industry, where the absence of a patent law was definitely amajor reason behind FDI.

Evolution of International Intellectual Property Rights Regime –The Road to the Paris Convention
With the introduction of IPR laws in an increasing number of countries,
Obviously, exactly what aspect is considered “deficient” will depend on one's view. For
example, there are good arguments for and against the products patent in chemical andpharmaceutical industries.
1

Chemical substances remained unpatentable until 1967 in West Germany, 1968 in the Nordic
countries, 1976 in Japan, 1978 in Switzerland, and 1992 in Spain. Pharmaceutical products
remained unpatentable until 1967 in West Germany and France, 1979 in Italy, and 1992 in
Spain. Pharmaceutical products were also unpatentable in Canada into the 1990s. For details,
see Patel (1989 p. 980).

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the pressures for an international IPR regime naturally started growing
from the late 19th century. Starting with the 1873 Vienna Congress, there
was a series of meetings to create an international IPR regime. These
finally resulted in the ratification by 11 countries of the Paris Conventionof the International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property (theoriginal signatories were Belgium, Portugal, France, Guatemala, Italy,
the Netherlands, San Salvador, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland). It covered
not just patents but also trademark laws (which enabled patentless Switzerland
and Netherlands to sign the Convention). In 1886, the Berne Convention
on copyrights was signed. What is notable is that, despite the emergenceof an international IPR regime, even the most advanced countries werestill routinely violating the IPR of other countries’ citizens well into the20th century.
As mentioned earlier, Switzerland and the Netherlands did not havea patent law until 1907 and 1912, respectively. The USA, a strong
advocate of patentee rights even then, did not acknowledge copyrights offoreigners until 1891. The US did not fully conform to the Berne Convention
on international copyright (1886) until 1988, when the country finallyabolished the requirement that copyrighted books had to be printed in the
US or typeset onUS plates. And as late as the late 19th century, there wasgreat concern in Britain over the widespread German violation of its
trademarks. It is interesting to note that at the time the British werecriticising Germany not only for using industrial espionage and theviolation of its trademark law but also for exporting goods made onconvict labour (recall the recent US dispute with China on this account).
On the other hand, exactly at the same time, the Germans were complaining
about the absence of a patent law in Switzerland and the consequent“theft” of German intellectual property by Swiss firms, especially in thechemical industry.
The international intellectual property rights regime established by
the Paris Convention, and subsequently embodied in the WIPO (WorldIntellectual Property Organisation) went through two major turns ofevents after the Second World War.

Evolution of International Intellectual Property Rights Regime –From NIEO to TRIPS

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During the 1970s and the early 1980s, as a part of their push for the New
International Economic Order (NIEO), the G77 developing countries
sought to generate greater transfer of technology from the advanced
countries through the reform of the international IPR regime. Especiallycontroversial was their push for: (i) exclusive compulsory licensing (where
the number of licensees is restricted by the government); (ii) reduced
licensing fees for developing countries; (iii) lengthening of the period of“right of priority” for the developing country inventors; (iv) and evenallowing developing countries to revoke license before the granting ofcompulsory licensing and relaxing the condition for revocation (Shell,
1998, pp. 120-3).
Contrary to the expectation by the G77 countries, however, thesedemands for the loosening of the international intellectual property rights
regime galvanised patentees in the developed countries into a counteroffensive. Especially important was the changing attitude of the US,
whose relative industrial decline over the 1960s and the 1970s prompteda wave of resentment against foreign “theft” of US intellectual properties.
Reflecting this mood, from the early 1980s, the US courts started favouring
patentees as never before. Particularly significant was the US realisationthat trade threats can be used as a way to enforce the IPR of the US
corporations on its trading partners. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s,
the US Trade Representative (USTR) started putting pressure throughbilateral trade talks on countries like Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Singapore,
and Taiwan, to “improve” their IPR regimes. Trade law amendments(especially to the so-called “Super 301” Section) in 1984 and 1988 made
IPR issue a key element in the functioning of the USTR.
In the meantime, the US realised that the use of trade threats as a means
to force changes on its trading partners’ IPR regimes needed not be
confined to bilateral trade talks. Consequently, in April 1986 the US
government put forward TRIPS as an item on the agenda for the Uruguay
Round of the GATT talks. Although until 1988, when the US started
pushing for it strongly TRIPS was not seen by most as an important itemin the Uruguay Round agenda (Siebeck, 1990a; Shell, 1998), it now
occupies an important place in the newly-emerging global governanceregime.

2. Is Patent Necessary for Innovation?

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In the recent debate surrounding the pharmaceutical industry, especiallybut not exclusively in relation to the AIDS/HIV drugs, many people
criticized the “artificially” high profit rate in the industry made possibleby the monopoly established by patents. Against such criticisms, thedefenders of the pharmaceutical industry have argued that, without suchhigh profit rates, there will be little investment in research and development,
and thus little innovation. Is this true?
Contrary to what the defenders of strong private intellectual property
rights (PIPR) believe, people often pursue knowledge for its own sake orfor the “public good”, so they do not always need monetary incentives
conferred by PIPR in order to generate new knowledge. This is indeed aview put forward by the 13 eminent scientists (all fellows of the Royal
Society of Britain) in an open letter to the Financial Times arguing
against TRIPS. They argue: “Patents are only one means for promoting
discovery and invention. Scientific curiosity, coupled with the desire tobenefit humanity, has been of far greater importance throughout history”(“Strong global patent rules increase the cost of medicines”, p. 20, The
Financial Times, 14 February, 2001). UNDP, in its 1999 Human Development
Report also cites some examples where “open access” (that is, the opposite
of private property right) has encouraged, rather than prevented, thegeneration of new knowledge in certain areas. It cites the example ofinternet-based computer software, where people are allowed to improve
the shared software available on the net if they can, but are asked to makethe improved version available freely (pp. 72-3).
More importantly, even without patents, the innovator can enjoy many“natural” protective mechanisms and therefore will be able to reap substantial
financial gains from his/her innovation. These natural protective mechanisms
include the following.
• The “imitation lag”, which refers to the lag between the introductionof an innovation and the emergence of “imitations” of such innovation.
This occurs because it is time-consuming to absorb new knowledge,
especially when parts of it are “tacit” in the sense that they cannot
be easily communicated across persons or organizations. Therefore,

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the larger the component of tacit knowledge in a new technology,
the more difficult it becomes to imitate it quickly.
• The “reputational advantage”, which refers to the phenomenon that
simply because he/she was the first person to come up with a new
product, consumers know his/her product better and tend to associate
it with superior quality. Needless to say, this advantage cannot lastindefinitely unless the innovator maintains quality and/or priceadvantage over the imitators.
• The head start in racing down “learning curves”. Unit production
costs tend to come down, as production experience accumulates,
and therefore the firm that started production earlier, at a given
point of time, tends to have lower unit costs.
That innovators enjoy the above-mentioned natural protective mechanisms
was in fact a popular argument used by the anti-patent movement inEurope during the 19th century and the idea behind the famous early 20thcentury Austrian-American economist, Joseph Schumpeter's vision ofcapitalist development through “creative destruction” of innovation. Indeed,a number of studies confirm that in most industries such natural protection
mechanism is more important than patents in motivating innovation. The
relatively insignificant effect of the patent system on innovative activities
in general is also confirmed by the historical experiences of Switzerland
and the Netherlands that we mentioned in item 1 in this brief.

3. TRIPS, Technology Transfer, and the Development ofTechnological Capabilities in Africa
What is TRIPS?
The TRIPS (Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of theWTO (World Trade Organization) covers a number of areas concerning
intellectual property rights. These include patents, copyright, trademark,geographical indications (e.g. only sparkling wine produced in the Champagne
region of France can be called Champagne), industrial designs, lay-out
designs of integrated circuits, and what is technically known as “undisclosed
information” (such as trade secret or information lodged with governments

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for, say, new drug approval). It allows WTO member countries to impose
trade sanctions in retaliation for the infringement by its trading partners
of intellectual property rights of its citizens.
Of these, the agreements on patents are the most controversial, giventhat they are economically most important and most complex in theirlegalities. The agreements on patents (which add significantly to theexisting Paris Convention on patents - see item 1 of this brief) have beenin the direction of significantly increasing the scope for patentability andfor patentee rights. Note that all these specify the “minimum” requirements,
so member countries are allowed to grant stronger protection to patentees.
Member countries are now compelled to provide most-favoured nation
treatment to other member countries (i.e. no discrimination between
member countries), and also national treatment to foreign citizens (i.e. nodiscrimination between nationals and foreigners).
Diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical methods, plants and animals andessentially biological processes for the production of plants and animals
still remain unpatentable, but micro-organisms and non-biological andmicrobiological processes are now patentable. Both products and processes
are now patentable. Many countries at the time of the agreement did nothave product patents in chemical and pharmaceutical industries (as it was
the case with most developed countries until as late as the 1970s - see item
1 of this brief). Moreover, in the case of process patent, the burden of
proof of infringement has been shifted from the patentee to the alleged
infringer. The minimum term of the patent has been extended, although
not by very much. The minimum term is now 20 years from the date offiling, whereas in the past this was somewhat shorter in some countries(e.g. some countries gave 17 years’ protection).
Patentee rights can still be over-ruled, especially through compulsory
licensing (national governments granting the license without the consent
of the patent holder) and parallel imports, under certain circumstances(e.g. public interest, national security), but the conditions under whichthese can be over-ruled have been tightened. Developing countries were
granted a five-year transition period to bring their patent laws and other
IPR laws to international standards, which expired at the end of 2000. The
least developed countries were given a 10-year transition period, but thiswill run out by the end of 2005. However, many experts regard thesetransition periods to have been far too short, given the enormous gaps in

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the conditions between the developing and the developed countries.

Will TRIPS Promote Innovation and Technological Capabilities inAfrica?
TRIPS affects technological (and thus industrial) development in developing
countries in two ways –- directly by affecting local innovation or international
technology transfer and indirectly by affecting the development of technologicalcapabilities, which in turn affect the course of a country’s ability togenerate and absorb new technologies.
The strengthening of PIPR through TRIPS will inevitably mean greater
formalization of the technology transfer process. Formalized technology
transfer through licensing may, other things being equal, increase the
incentive of the seller of the technology to more actively “teach” therecipient in the process of technology transfer. In this process, the recipient
does not just get taught how to use the technology being transferred, but
is likely to increase his/her technological capability – or in other words,
will enable him/her to “learn to learn” (the phrase originates from Joseph
Stiglitz).
However, such beneficial effect will happen only when the recipientof technology already possesses significant amount of capability to engage
in such learning process –– that is, when he/she already possesses sometechnological capability. Many developing country producers, especiallythose in Africa, do not have such capabilities, and this means that TRIPS
is unlikely to bring about positive effects.
Against this argument, it may be said that countries without suchminimum technological capabilities, being so far from the frontiers oftechnological development, would not typically be in a position to be
involved in the transfer of patent-protected technologies that are affectedby TRIPS. For example, many firms in developing countries use secondhand or even third-hand machines, the patents for the technologies embodied
in them, if there ever were any, would have long expired. In this respect,most African countries are less likely to be adversely affected by the
TRIPS agreement than the more advanced developing countries, which
may have the capabilities to exploit the patented technologies but are
barred from doing so by TRIPS. However, even in the less advanced
developing countries, patented technologies may be relevant as far as

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licensing by TNC subsidiaries is concerned, as they tend to use technologies
which are more advanced and therefore more likely to require licensing
than the ones used by the local firms.
Moreover, the higher prices of technology acquisition that result fromTRIPS are likely to have negative effects on the accumulation of technologicalcapabilities. Strengthening of PIPR through TRIPS means higher average
price for technology acquisition, which in turn means a reduction in theoverall inflow of technology into developing countries, other things
being equal. This means fewer opportunities for learning and consequently
less addition to the stock of technological capabilities. In the words of theformer Chief Economist of the World Bank and highly respected academic
Joseph Stiglitz, “knowledge is a key input into the production of knowledge;
an increase in the ‘price’ of knowledge (as a result of stricter intellectual
property standards) may thereby reduce the production of knowledge”. 3
Another cause for concern is that the new international IPR regime thathas come into existence with TRIPS puts even less emphasis on technologicalcapability building in the poorest developing countries than its predecessor,
which operated under the shadow of the so-called NIEO (New International
Economic Order) demanded by the developing countries in the 1970s.
This makes the prospect of the African countries amending this deficiency
gloomier that ever.

4. Policy Options for Africa under the WTO Regime
Africa as the Consumer of Technologies––The AIDS/HIV Case
The greatest cause for concern for the African policy-makers resulting
from the changes in the international intellectual property rights regime
following the TRIPS agreement has been that of the AIDS/HIV drugs
case. Many pharmaceutical companies in developed countries have tried
to prevent some developing country pharmaceutical companies (mainly
from Thailand, Brazil, India, and Argentina) from exporting cheap AIDS/
HIV drugs to other developing countries, especially those in Africa,
3
Joseph Stilglitz," More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington
Consensus", originally delivered as the 1998 WIDER Annual Lecture, reprinted in H-J. Chang(ed.) The Rebel Within: Joseph Stiglitz at the World Bank, 2001, Anthem Press, p. 52, n. 33.

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invoking TRIPS.
Many people, both inside and outside Africa, have been outraged by
the fact that developed country drug companies were charging 10-20
times more for these drugs to extremely poor countries whose basic social
fabric is being torn apart by the high incidence of AIDS/HIV. Following
these criticisms, a few pharmaceutical companies have finally relented
and recently offered discounts on these drugs for very poor countries.
However, they have insisted that this is merely an act of charity andtherefore should not be interpreted as a signal that they are going to relax
their claims on their intellectual property. This is proven by the fact thatthese were among the 41 pharmaceutical companies that took the South
African government to court in March 2001 (but then eventually backed
down in the face of public criticisms) on the ground that its patent law
provides too much power for the government to control patentee rights
through compulsory licensing and parallel imports and that therefore it is“unconstitutional”.
The defenders of the pharmaceutical companies sometimes ask why
only they should be asked to serve public interest by providing cheap
AIDS/HIV drugs to the poor countries, when, say, food companies are notasked to solve the food crisis in poor countries (see for example, theremarks made by some representatives of the pharmaceutical industry
quoted in the article by David Pilling, “Patents and Patients” ––The
Financial Times, (17/18 February 2001).
However, this is at best a misinformed and at worst a self-serving
argument. The pharmaceutical industry relies a lot more heavily on patent
protection for their profits than most industries, which means that its
profits are a lot more “artificially” manufactured by public intervention(in this case, patent law) than those of other industries. This means thatthe industry has a greater duty to serve the public interest than otherindustries. Given this, the public has all the right to weaken patentee
rights, if it decides that the public interest lies in re-distributing income
from the pharmaceutical companies to the consumers.
The defenders of the pharmaceutical industry argue that without strong
patent protection their profits will dry up and thhey will,therefore, not beable to invest in research and development that are necessary for the

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invention of new drugs.
This argument, once again, is misleading. For one thing, much ofpharmaceutical research is actually not done by the pharmaceutical companies.
For example, in the US, about half of pharmaceutical research is conductedwith public sector funding or private charity funding. More importantly,
given the “artificially” created nature of profits in the industry, it is notclear whether the pharmaceutical companies really need the rates of profit
that they enjoy now to come up with new drugs (see item 2 in this brief
for further discussion).
Thus seen, the African policy-makers need to air a collective demand,using the AIDS/HIV case as its launching pad, that the TRIPS agreement
be reformed. The basis for this reform should be the recognition thatpatentee rights are not “natural” things but exist only because of the
public decision to protect them, and therefore can be over-ridden when
they clash with broader the public interest.

Africa as the User of Technologies
The AIDS/HIV case mainly concerns the role of Africa as a consumer ofsome final products of technologies. But Africa also needs to advance its
position as a user of technologies and as a generator of them (albeit on amodest scale, realistically speaking).
As the user of technologies, Africa needs to assert its position as acontinent that is in serious need of large-scale technology transfer. Given
that the lack of technological capabilities in the continent is a serious
obstacle to such transfer (see item 3 of this brief), African countries needto demand greater international provision for technological capability
building.
This demand should include not only greater international assistanceto education and training; it should also include the revision of the WTO
agreement in a way that makes infant industry protection easier (at the
moment, it is allowed but frowned upon) and export subsidies more

Some countries reduced such ceilings substantially - for example, India cut its trade-weighted
average tariff from 71% to 32%. However, many countries, including India, have fixed themat relatively high levels - for example, Brazil cut its trade-weighted average tariff from 41% to27%, Chile from 35% to 25%, Turkey from 25% to 22% (see Amsden, 2000, Table1.)
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widely allowable (at the moment, it is allowed only for the least developed
countries). Both these will allow greater opportunities for “learning” inmore technologically-advanced industries, and thus for a faster build-up
of technological capabilities.
Of course, our emphasis on the need for reform the WTO agreement
should not be interpreted as suggesting that the African countries should
wait for the external conditions to change before they do anything. Suchreform is going to be made only in the future, if it ever is. Therefore,
African countries need to learn to exploit the legitimate provisions andthe “loopholes” in the WTO agreement in a way that maximizes theiropportunities to build up technological capabilities.
First of all, it should not be forgotten that, even on paper, the WTO
agreement by no means obliges countries to abolish all tariffs and protections,and many developing countries have decided on tariff ceilings that are
still considerable. 4 Moreover, the least developed countries, many ofthem in Africa, have until 2006 to reduce tariffs and the product patent
protection that has the deadline of 2005. These provisions need to be
exploited to the maximum.
Second, it should be remembered that infant industry protection, which
is important in providing the “learning” opportunities to the domestic
producers, is still allowed (up to eight years). However, it must be pointed
out that infant industry protection was not the clause invoked by countries
like Korea when using protection under the old GATT regime - theyusually used the balance of payments (BOP) clause that we discuss below.
Third, there are still provisions for “emergency” tariff increase (“importsurcharge”). This can be done on two grounds. The first is a sudden surge
in sectoral imports, which a number of countries have already used (e.g.
Argentinean tariff on Brazilian cars). The second is the overall BOP
problem, for which almost all developing countries qualify and which a
number of countries have also used. Since countries have discretion on
how much emergency tariffs can be imposed on which commodities, as
far as these are on the whole commensurate with the scale of the BOP
problem, there is still a lot of room for deliberately creating rents in areas
where learning opportunity may be maximised.
Fourth, not all subsidies are “illegal” for everyone. Most importantly
for Africa, the least developed countries is allowed to use export subsidies,

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which can be quite important in providing “learning” opportunities todeveloping country producers. Subsidies for agriculture, regional development,
basic R&D, environment-related technology upgrading are still allowed.
Moreover, the subsidy restrictions only cover “trade-related” policies,
which means that there are many “domestic” policies that can be used forthe creation of learning rent and other technology policy purposes examples will include subsidies on equipment investments, support forstart-up enterprises, subsidies for investment in particular skills, etc..
Fifth, for the purpose of this Brief, it is very important to note thatmany standard tools of technology policy are not banned by the WTO.
Key policy tools include: investments in education and training (including
on-the-job training); strengthening of public R&D institutions for farming
or small-scale industries (Taiwan has been especially successful in providing
R&D support for small firms); support of private-sector R&D activities;
establishment of public-private joint R&D ventures; and establishment ofscience parks.
Lastly, as for the TRIMS (trade-related investment measures), it should
be noted that it is not as stringent as it is sometimes thought to be.
Developing countries can maintain or even strengthen local contents
requirement, which is an important tool for technology upgrading. They
are still allowed to use export promotion measures, such as “trade balancing
stipulations” (where TNCs are required to exports final products whose
value equal the imports of parts and components) or export requirement
for TNCs in export processing zones. Many countries (e.g., Brazil, Argentina,
Chile, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand) have in fact beenusing these provisions in a number of industries (e.g., automobile,
pharmaceutical and in various consumer goods industries).

5. Conclusion
The supporters of the new international intellectual property rights
regime, which has enormously strengthened the protection for the patentees,
have staked their arguments on two major grounds. First of all, they argue
that strong patent protection is absolutely necessary if we want technologicalprogress. Secondly, they argue that protection of intellectual property
was the key to the development of the currently developed countries. In

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this brief, we have shown that neither of these claims are true. In mostindustries, patents are not necessary to generate innovation, and thedeveloped countries had developed on the basis of intellectual property
rights regimes whose quality fell short even of the “low” standards thatthe developing countries had before the TRIPS agreement.
Above all, it is important to note that intellectual property rights are apublicly-granted monopoly,that are justifiable when their social benefits
outweigh their costs. Thus , there is nothing wrong in people making
collective decisions (both at national and international levels) to weaken
the patentee rights, should they think the current bundle of such rights issocially unacceptable.
The new international intellectual property rights regime can bringsome benefits to developing countries, but it is likely to be negative forthem on the whole. African countries are going to suffer particularly as
the consumers of technologies, although, as the users of technologies,
they are not likely to suffer as much as the more technologically advanced
developing countries in the new regime.
Demands need to be made to reform the TRIPS agreement in a way that
benefits developing countries. And as these changes are graduaally made,if they are made at all, developing countries should find ways of exploiting
to the maximum the legitimate provisions and “loopholes” in the new
regime, in order to absorb advanced technologies, and more importantly,
develop their technological capabilities more quickly and effectively.

References
Amsden, A. 2000. Industrialisation Under New WTO Law, a paper for the
UNCTAD X meeting, 12-19 February, 2000, Bangkok
Patel, S. 1989. "Intellectual Property Rights in the Uruguay Round - A
Disaster for the South?" Economic and Political Weekly, 6 May 1989.
Shell, S. 1998. Power and Ideas. Albany, State University of New York
Press.
Siebeck, W. 1990a. “Introduction” in W. Siebeck (ed.), Strengthening ofIntellectual Property Rights in Developing Countries, Discussion Paper
No. 112, Washington, D.C., World Bank.
UNDP. 1999. Human Development Report 1999, New York, Oxford
University Press.

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Who Benefits from the New
International
Intellectual
Property Rights Regime? And
What Should Africa Do?

Ha-JoonChang

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The Technopolicy Brief Series
The African Technology Policy Studies network (ATPS) is a medium for
brokerage of knowledge on technology and technology policy issues for
Africa. In the realization of this function, the network has launched theTechnopolicy Briefs Series, to provide critical knowledge and advice on
fundamental policy issues in the realm of technology. The series is easyto-read and targeted to a wider audience, particularly government leaders,
policy-makers, legislators and all those who can play a catalytic role in
Africa’s development.

For more information on ATPS, please contact Dr. Osita Ogbu, Executive
Director, African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS), 3rd Floor,
The Chancery , P.O. Box 10081, 00100 General Post Office, Nairobi,
Kenya.
Email: oogbu@atpsnet.org
Telephones: 254-2-723800/ 714168/ 714498 Fax: 254-2-714028

Professor Ha-Joon Chang works at the Faculty of
Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge

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