Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Comment on this article   Intellectual property regulation under international law, in its truest sense, is a relatively recent development. Before the 1990s, intellectual property regulation was a creature of national law. International intellectual property treaties and conventions essentially formed a web of loosely coordinated protection, with the modest goal of member nations according each other national treatment. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs), created in the mid-1990s, fundamentally altered the previous system. Intellectual property rights under international law became less an aspect of national discretion and much more an object of global governance. The implications of this change are only now being sorted out. This review essay contains five sections. The first section presents the emergence of the topic of intellectual property regulation under international law in the discipline, focusing on key developments spurring inquiry. The second section provides a brief discussion of the intellectual property forms regulated under international law, a discussion of international intellectual property regulation in the pre-TRIPs era, and a discussion of international intellectual property regulation in the post-TRIPs era. The third section reviews the discipline's prevailing considerations of intellectual property regulation under ... log in or subscribe to read full text