Globalization and Indigenization: Legal Transplant of a Universal TRIPS Regime in a Multicultural World

Abstract

This article considers the harmonizing effect of TRIPS and the global enforcement of IPR through a discussion of legal transplantation and cultural adaptation. Part I examines the harmonizing effect of TRIPS and its implications to the countries at different development levels, particularly countries in the process of industrialization. It argues that the peripheral role of the developing countries from participation to assimilation in the process of globalization has exemplified the significant harmonizing effect of the TRIPS Agreement. Apart from focusing on the global intellectual property regime, Part II seeks to demystify the cultural facets of East Asian countries in the process of legal harmonization, taking specific account of Confucianism as a dominant philosophy that underpins attitudes toward legal reform. Having examined the harmonizing effect of the TRIPS Agreement and the distinctive cultural traits of the Confucianized region, Parts III–V provide case studies of three countries Japan, Korea, and China that have emerged in East Asia and have transplanted international IPR norms into their national legal systems during their modernization process. The author argues that the involvement of the pre-industrial countries in the global economy illustrates their strategic reorientation and concludes that legal assimilation is an inevitable cost of the participation in the global trading system.