# **Intellectual property rights (IPR)**

**_International Experience._** Carsten Fink, in chapter 23, discusses intellectual property rights. IPR protect creations which result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary, and artistic fields.  IPR instruments include patents, copyrights, trademarks, geographic indications, layout designs for integrated circuits, plant breeders’ rights, and trade secrets.

Fink notes that the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was one of the key outcomes of the Uruguay Round and it is now one of the pillars of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It sets minimum standards of protection for all IPRs instruments, but also leaves governments important flexibilities to design IPRs regimes to suit domestic needs.

For the multilateral trading system, TRIPS marked a significant departure from narrow negotiations on border measures such as tariffs and quotas toward the establishment of multilateral rules for measures that affect trade beyond borders. This move reflected underlying trends in international commerce. Due to the growth of trade in knowledge and informationintensive goods, the economic implications of imitation, copying, and counterfeiting had in many industries become at least as relevant for international commerce as conventional border restrictions to trade.

Yet the TRIPS negotiations on intellectual property were marked by significant NorthSouth differences. Developed countries, which host the world’s largest intellectual propertyproducing industries, were the key advocates for comprehensive minimum standards of protection and enforcement of IPRs. By contrast, many developing countries, which see themselves mostly as consumers of intellectual property, felt that stronger standards of protection would serve to limit access to new technologies and products, thereby undermining poor countries’ development prospects. Not surprisingly, the TRIPS Agreement remains one of the most controversial agreements of the WTO.

For example, stronger pharmaceutical patent rights required by TRIPS have raised concerns that greater pricing power by pharmaceutical companies would adversely affect access to medicines in poor countries. To address these concerns WTO members have reaffirmed the right of governments to use compulsory licenses to override the exclusive rights conferred by patents. In addition, a special mechanism was created in 2003 that allows developing countries with insufficient pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities to import generic drugs.

The literature reviewed by Fink shows that, for middle income countries, stronger IPRs bring about benefits in terms of increased trade, foreign direct investment and technology transfer. The size of benefits, though, depends on complementary policy reforms, notably improvements in other aspects of the investment climate. In contrast, for small developing economies with little inventive and creative capacity, stronger IPRs may lead to rent transfers to foreign title holders.

**_Collecting Royalties for Authors and Writers in Russia_** . One of the themes of World Bank research on intellectual property is how the IPR laws can be used to collect royalties for

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