The Paradox of Intellectual Property Lawmaking in the New Millennium: Universal Templates as Terms of Surrender for Non-Industrial Nations; Piracy as an Offshoot

Abstract

This paper argues in two major sections that the role of the less developed or non-industrial countries (nICs) in intellectual property (IP) lawmaking has vanished for the most part and that piracy in nICs is partly the flip side of the inability of nICs to come to the aid of their national economic and cultural pursuits. It maintains, in section 1, that IP lawmaking has come to a virtual end in nICs because the crucial issues that compel the adoption of national formulae to enhance economic and cultural progress are precisely those already covered under TRIPs. The imposition on nICs that have become members of the WTO to adopt TRIPs, the latest by 2005, has effectively put paid to the role of nICs to intervene in their own interests. The paper also contends, in section 2, that, while piracy is a global problem, rampant even within the ICs themselves, the incidence of piracy in nICs is better characterised as being a direct consequence of the forcible incorporation of incongruent or inappropriate IP laws into the statute books of the nICs.

The paper concludes that there are no ways forward; that, any movement to redress the in-built biases in the international IP system against the nICs should adopt a number of steps backwards and introduce exceptions to TRIPs in the interest of national development, health, education and culture.

Keywords: intellectual property, lawmaking, TRIPs, piracy, non-industrial countries

JEL Classification: D23, K11, O34