Important Article about the Global Knowledge Economy
Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
Political Organising Behind TRIPS
by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite
first published September 2004
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Global Knowledge Cartels
Box 1: Chemical and Pharmaceutical Patents and Cartels
The Changing Knowledge Game
Box 2: Corporate Laboratories of Knowledge
Changing Strategies
Changing Places For Deciding Rules
"Stealing from the Mind"
Box 3: Intellectual Property History
Protectionism
Getting US Government On Board
Power Through Committees
The Bilaterals: Carrots and Sticks
The Bilaterals: Big Stick Section 301
Global Surveillance
Box 4: Guesstimating Losses to "Piracy"
An Eye to Multilateral Action
Persuading Europe and Japan
Box 5: Re-engineering Patent Law
Living?
Inventive?
Useful?
Getting Intellectual Property on the Negotiating Table
Box 6: Intellectual Property Webs in Biotechnology
Patent Challenges
Persuasion and Principles
Negotiating Circles
At the Negotiating Table
The Puzzle of TRIPS
Other Answers to the Puzzle
The Visions of a Few
Box 7: The University-Industrial Knowledge Complex
The Public Pays
Uniting in Resistance
Notes and References
TRIPS -- the World Trade Organisation's agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -- was the most important agreement on intellectual property of the 20th century. It revolutionised the way that property rights in information were defined and enforced. TRIPS effectively globalises the set of intellectual property principles it contains, because most countries are members of, or are seeking membership of, the World Trade Organisation that administers TRIPS.When TRIPS was signed by more than one hundred government ministers in April 1994, the United States, the European Community and Japan had the world's dominant software, pharmaceutical, chemical and entertainment industries between them and the world's most important trade marks. The rest of the world had nothing much to gain by agreeing to terms of trade for intellectual property that offered these countries so much protection. Why did states sign up to TRIPS?
They did so because of a failure of democratic processes, both nationally and internationally. This enabled a small group of men within the United States to capture the US trade-agenda-setting process; then, in partnership with European and Japanese multinationals, to draft intellectual property principles that became the blueprint for TRIPS. The resistance of other countries was crushed through US trade power.
This briefing paper explores the background to TRIPS and the corporate political organising that orchestrated and paved the way for the agreement.
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