LLAW6132 Chap.1 IP in a Global Economy: Internationalisation and Its Limits
IP in a Global Economy: Internationalisation and Its Limits
Why a national right needs an international frame
The chapter opens with two institutional definitions of intellectual property, one from WIPO that stresses creations of the mind and one from the WTO that stresses the power to exclude others. It then fixes four characteristics: intangibility, creativity, a monopolistic character and territoriality.
The last of these is the reason the course exists, because a right that stops at the border leaves a creator with a foreign market either filing country by country or relying on a treaty.
Spreading protection is not the same as unifying it
Drawing on Peter Yu, the lecture lists four gains from an international regime: less free riding by later comers, economies of scale in governance, a safeguard against protectionism, and lower transaction costs abroad.
It then separates internationalisation, which extends protection but keeps national diversity, from harmonisation, which unifies substantive standards, and asks whether one size can fit a diverse world.
Five disharmonising moves pull the other way: reciprocity rules, diversification, deals outside the WTO, private rule making such as the domain name policy, and protection built through contracts and technical locks.
Two regional agreements pulling in different directions
The United States, Mexico and Canada agreement raises standards, with a copyright term of life plus seventy years and strong anti-circumvention rules.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership borrows the TRIPS objectives, keeps its flexibilities, recognises the Doha Declaration on public health and lets TRIPS prevail over any conflict, while still admitting IP claims to investor-state arbitration and requiring accession to the 1991 plant variety convention.
A system under strain
The chapter closes on current pressures: the WTO appeal crisis, long-arm jurisdiction, national security, global problems such as climate and public health, and emerging technology.
Russia's decree cutting compulsory licence fees for holders from listed countries to zero is the lecture's sharpest example, and it raises the question whether the TRIPS security exception should be confined by conditions of imminent danger, proportionality and necessity.
What this chapter covers
- 01
WIPO and WTO definitions of intellectual property
- 02
Intangibility, creativity, exclusivity and territoriality
- 03
What drives internationalisation, and four gains from it
- 04
Internationalisation compared with harmonisation
- 05
Reciprocity, bilateral deals and private rule making
- 06
The USMCA and RCEP intellectual property chapters
- 07
National security measures and the TRIPS security exception
Worked example · free
Is a new filing system internationalisation or harmonisation?
- 2Classify the scheme against the two definitions.
- 2Identify which of the four gains it delivers.
- 2Say what would have to change for the critics to be right.
Key terms
- Internationalisation
- Extending IP protection across borders through treaties, national treatment and international registration while preserving national diversity in substantive law.
- Harmonisation
- Unifying the substantive standards of IP law across countries, as the draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty would have done for patents.
- TRIPS Flexibilities
- The room TRIPS leaves members to differ, including special transitional arrangements and the treatment of moral rights and neighbouring rights.
- Reciprocity Rule
- A rule protecting foreigners only if their own country protects nationals of the granting state, cited in the lecture from database and chip protection laws.
- Security Exception
- A TRIPS provision allowing members to take measures necessary to protect essential security interests in war or other emergency in international relations.
IP in a Global Economy: Internationalisation and Its Limits FAQ
Why is territoriality the most important characteristic of IP for this course?
Because it is the one that creates a need for international law. A right granted by one state confers nothing in another, so a creator with foreign markets depends on separate national rights or on a treaty obliging each state to recognise foreigners. Every instrument studied later answers that problem in its own way.
Is RCEP a weaker agreement than the USMCA on IP?
In most respects it preserves more flexibility, borrowing TRIPS objectives, recognising the Doha Declaration and deferring to TRIPS on conflicts. But it also admits IP claims to investor-state arbitration and requires accession to the 1991 plant variety convention, so calling it simply weaker misses two provisions that raise obligations.
How should I answer a question on national security and IP?
Take each measure separately and test it against the conditions the lecture raises for confining the security exception: a serious and imminent danger, protection of a primary interest without prejudice to secondary ones, and action that is the only way to meet the danger. Nationality-based measures also raise non-discrimination questions.
Exam move
Draw the internationalisation and harmonisation line from memory and place every instrument in the chapter on it, then add the five disharmonising moves underneath. If you can explain the position of each in one sentence, you have the framework the later chapters assume.
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