MINI-SYMPOSIUM: INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC GOODS AND THE TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY UNDER A GLOBALIZED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REGIME: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

Abstract

In recent years the world has moved decisively toward successive strengthening – and harmonization – of intellectual property protection. The result is the emergence, more than ever before, of a globalized regime of private rights in information and of the foundations for a rudimentary transnational system of innovation. This new system will have profound implications for the nature of such basic processes as innovation, technology transfer, competition, and economic development. It also raises fundamental, and often disturbing, questions about the ability of governments to provide critical public goods to their citizenry, both within and across countries. Such goods include public health, education, environmental protection, and other elements of social worth that must rely increasingly on the exercise of private rights over technical inputs. It is conceivable that the globalized intellectual property regime will improve prospects for information trade by encouraging invention and resolving failures in technology markets. It is also possible that the system will throw up high roadblocks in the path of follow-on innovation, competition, and the attainment of public goods. These questions are deep and complex, and they require sustained analysis. The objective difficulties of this task constitute one of the main reasons that we decided to organize the Conference on International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime in April 2003 at Duke University. This was a major attempt to subject the complex conceptual foundations of the changing worldwide intellectual property regime to systematic legal and economic analysis. To this end, we invited a distinguished group of economists, political scientists, and legal experts to assess the public processes and inputs they Journal of International Economic Law 7(2), 275–278 # International Public Goods & Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime, Ed. Maskus and Reichman (Cambridge University Press 2004)