For more than two decades, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has been using the tools of trade policy to encourage U.S. trading partners to provide adequate and effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). That effort has both involved and inspired considerable discussion by governments and private actors on the meaning, determinants, and importance of adequate and effective IPR protection.
This essay explores one aspect of that discussion—the determinants of effective protection—by considering three commonly held beliefs about the path to overcoming the failure of a country’s intellectual property laws to provide adequate and effective protection. Each of these ideas posits a determinant of effective IPR enforcement: The first is domestic economic interest, the second is the rule of law, and the third is political will. I aim to briefly critique each of these ideas, propose a way of fitting them together, and extrapolate a general prescription.
