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Similarly, the oxymoronic concept of "imposed democracy" authorizes top-down regime change in the name of democracy. Yet the United States has always argued that genuine democracy must flow from the will of the people, not from military occupation. 67 Finally, a policy of strategic unilateralism seems unsustainable in an interdependent world. For over the past two centuries, the United States has become party not just to a few treaties, but to a global network of closely interconnected treaties enmeshed in multiple frameworks of international institutions. Unilateral administration decisions to break or bend one treaty commitment thus rarely end the matter, but more usually trigger vicious cycles of treaty violation. In an interdependent world, the United States simply cannot afford to ignore its treaty obligations while at the same time expecting its treaty partners to help it solve the myriad global problems that extend far beyond any one nation's control: the global AIDS and SARS crises, climate change, international debt, drug smuggling, trade imbalances, currency coordination, and trafficking in human beings, to name just a few. Repeated incidents of American treaty-breaking create the damaging impression of a United States contemptuous of both its treaty obligations and treaty partners. That impression undermines American soft power at the exact moment that the United States is trying to use that soft power to mobilize those same partners to help it solve problems it simply cannot solve alone: most obviously, the war against global terrorism, but also the postwar construction of Iraq, the Middle East crisis, or the renewed nuclear militarization of North Korea.

The increasingly global nature of development challenges—including climate change, security, and pandemic response—is laying bare the reality that global solutions are needed, and that the traditional model of development as resources flowing from “North” to “South” is not only insufficient for meeting the challenges ahead, but also fails to reflect the reality of the changing development landscape. Instead, there is a need for a new model of cooperation, where all countries act as partners in achieving global outcomes.

In September, the Korean International Cooperation Agency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs convened the 15th Seoul ODA International Conference, which brought together academics, policymakers, and civil society organisations to discuss ways to “Expand Horizons for Global Development Partnership”—this year’s conference theme. The conversation reflected on the need for greater collaboration for development—particularly with “dual” cooperation actors that both receive and provide development cooperation—to address global challenges and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In this blog, we summarize key themes and takeaways from this year’s conference, particularly on questions around the challenges and opportunities for deepening cooperation for development. These themes are also explored in a new CGD paper on the need for a global development paradigm.

Representatives from innovative and creative industries in Brazil, India, Argentina and Egypt told delegates at the WIPO Inter-sessional Intergovernmental meeting on a Development Agenda for WIPO how IP had helped boost their industries’ competitiveness in local and international markets and contribute to the development of the local economy.

Denise Naimara described how Companhia Vale do Rio Doce , the biggest diversified mining company in Brazil with operations in 18 countries, acknowledged and rewarded intellectual property contributions by their employees. “When we license our patented technologies, we know that this contributes to Brazil´s economic growth and the creation of jobs. Since we started protecting our intellectual property, our export revenue has increased, helping to contribute to Brazil’s sustainable development.”

Just as the Global South has become increasingly frustrated by the Global North’s incessant demands for higher international intellectual property standards, a group of middle-income countries seemed to have found a formula for success. In the past two decades, these countries selectively adapted international intellectual property standards, to the extent allowed by the TRIPS Agreement and acquiesced by the more powerful WTO members.18 As a result, this group of emerging countries gradually obtained a greater share of the benefits provided by the TRIPSbased international intellectual property regime. As former WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo recalled: [I]n 1995, and earlier in the negotiations leading to the conclusion of TRIPS, the international [intellectual property] system was largely seen as a trade interest of the developed economies. Today, the picture differs dramatically. Some middle-income countries are among the major users of the global [intellectual property] system, and many other developing countries are increasingly engaged with it.19

Brazil, China, and India are oft-cited examples. Together with Russia and South Africa, they are frequently discussed in the context of the BRICS countries. Other fast-growing emerging countries have also received similar benefits from the WTO and the TRIPS-based international intellectual property regime. In a book chapter written about a decade ago, I identified the ten largest economies outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that had a gross national income per capita of less than US$15,000, but some of the world’s highest volumes of high-technology exports. 20 Referring to them as “middle intellectual property powers,” that chapter highlighted the considerable economic and technological improvements in the world’s fast-growing middle-income countries (see Tables 1 and 2). In addition to the BRICS countries, the ten surveyed economies included Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Respect for domestic intellectual property intuitively is an incentive for domestic innovative activity. If a country chooses not to respect foreign intellectual property, foreign innovators are harmed. In this paper, we address the relationship between respect of foreign intellectual property, as well as domestic, and technological innovation. Using primitive microeconomic assumptions, and the fact that intellectual property rights make demand curves steeper by restricting availability of substitutes, we demonstrate that a country will be more innovative if it respects both domestic and foreign intellectual property. Respect for foreign intellectual property is thus not only best for global innovation, but it yields domestic advantages as well in terms of technological advances and competitive advantage.

Our theoretical conclusion has strong empirical support. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index includes countries for which objective data on innovation and research are sparse. These are the countries that tend not to respect intellectual property very well, in contrast to developed countries that are wealthy, innovative, and have good intellectual property right protection. Using the Global Competitiveness Index, we demonstrate that countries that protect foreigners’ intellectual property as well as their own have more technologically sophisticated production processes and are more globally competitive with unique products; these countries also have more triadic patents. Intuitively, foreign respect of domestic intellectual property is also strongly linked to innovation, something our theoretical model also showed.

Similarly, the oxymoronic concept of "imposed democracy" authorizes top-down regime change in the name of democracy. Yet the United States has always argued that genuine democracy must flow from the will of the people, not from military occupation. 67 Finally, a policy of strategic unilateralism seems unsustainable in an interdependent world. For over the past two centuries, the United States has become party not just to a few treaties, but to a global network of closely interconnected treaties enmeshed in multiple frameworks of international institutions. Unilateral administration decisions to break or bend one treaty commitment thus rarely end the matter, but more usually trigger vicious cycles of treaty violation. In an interdependent world, the United States simply cannot afford to ignore its treaty obligations while at the same time expecting its treaty partners to help it solve the myriad global problems that extend far beyond any one nation's control: the global AIDS and SARS crises, climate change, international debt, drug smuggling, trade imbalances, currency coordination, and trafficking in human beings, to name just a few. Repeated incidents of American treaty-breaking create the damaging impression of a United States contemptuous of both its treaty obligations and treaty partners. That impression undermines American soft power at the exact moment that the United States is trying to use that soft power to mobilize those same partners to help it solve problems it simply cannot solve alone: most obviously, the war against global terrorism, but also the postwar construction of Iraq, the Middle East crisis, or the renewed nuclear militarization of North Korea.

Representatives from innovative and creative industries in Brazil, India, Argentina and Egypt told delegates at the WIPO Inter-sessional Intergovernmental meeting on a Development Agenda for WIPO how IP had helped boost their industries’ competitiveness in local and international markets and contribute to the development of the local economy.

Denise Naimara described how Companhia Vale do Rio Doce , the biggest diversified mining company in Brazil with operations in 18 countries, acknowledged and rewarded intellectual property contributions by their employees. “When we license our patented technologies, we know that this contributes to Brazil´s economic growth and the creation of jobs. Since we started protecting our intellectual property, our export revenue has increased, helping to contribute to Brazil’s sustainable development.”

And public support for international law is not limited to a few narrow topics. It is consistently high across many issues and institutions. In a poll taken in 2000, for instance, 63 percent agreed that “it is becoming necessary to have more international standards and agreements among many nations on labor, human rights, and the environment.” A more recent poll (from June 2005) found that 73 percent of Americans specifically supported American participation in the Kyoto agreement to reduce global warming. That same month, another poll found that 67 percent of Americans believed that the United States should comply with rulings against it by the World Trade Organization. Americans are undoubtedly as acutely concerned about US national interest as the current Administration. Yet they understand that this interest can often best be advanced through international law rather than in opposition to it.

The difference between self executing and non self executing treaties is commonly misunderstood. Whether a treaty is self executing or not, it is legally binding on the United States. Whether it is self executing or not, it is supreme law of the land. If it is not self executing, Marshall said, it is not `a rule for the Court'; he did not suggest that it is not law for the President or for Congress. It is their obligation to see to it that it is faithfully implemented; it is their obligation to do what is necessary to make it a rule for the courts if the treaty requires that it be a rule for the courts, or if making it a rule for the courts is a necessary or a proper means for the United States to carry out its obligation.*

When a treaty requires domestic legislation or an appropriation of funds to carry out United States obligations, only the Congress can supply them. As Missouri v. Holland confirmed, Congress has the power to do what is `necessary and proper' to implement a treaty even if its action might not have been within other Congressional powers.111 But as early as the Jay Treaty, debate flared as to whether Congress is constitutionally and morally obligated to implement treaties.112 In a draft for Washington's message to the House of Representatives, Hamilton wrote:

the House of Representatives have no moral power to refuse the execution of a treaty which is not contrary to the Constitution, because it pledges the public faith; and have no legal power to refuse its execution because it is a law—until at least it ceases to be a law by a regular act of revocation of the competent authority. 113

According to Professor Drezner, club standards tend to emerge when adjustment costs are low for great powers but high for the rest of the world. As he explained:

[a] great power concert will generate enough market power to lock in the concert’s preferred set of regulatory standards. The combined market size of a great power concert will induce most recalcitrant states into shifting their standards. However, states with severe adjustment costs will still resist, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma aspect of enforcement can tempt some governments into noncompliance; under this constellation of interests, the enforcement of standards becomes an issue. The crucial step for coordination to take place is a coalition of the willing among the greater powers.69

The US Constitution provides that the president “shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” (Article II, section 2). Treaties are binding agreements between nations and become part of international law. Treaties to which the United States is a party also have the force of federal legislation, forming part of what the Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land.”

The majority of international agreements into which the United States enters, however, are executive agreements. According to a 2018 Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) Report, “[c]ommentators estimate[d] that more than 90% of international legal agreements concluded by the United States have taken the form of an executive agreement.”7 There are three categories of executive agreements: 1) congressional-executive agreements, 2) executive agreements made pursuant to a treaty, and 3) sole executive agreements.

These controversies overshadow a real success story the extraordinary achievements of the UN's most effective specialized agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). By working relentlessly to raise the level of protection for patents, copyrights, and trademarks worldwide, the WIPO has done more to harness human creativity for social progress than any other international organization in history. The United States, as a world leader in sectors highly dependent on intellectual property protection including aerospace, publishing, computer technology, industrial electronics, pharmaceuticals, motion pictures, and sound recordings naturally plays an active role in the work of the WIPO. Perhaps more surprising, a growing number of developing countries are key players as well. They have come to realize that they need strong intellectual property protection to promote their own economic development and to preserve their cultural traditions.

Adam Smith taught us that the wealth of nations rested on three pillars: labor, capital, and natural resources. Our generation has added a fourth pillar intellectual property in all of its forms: patents to protect new technology, copyrights to protect literary and artistic works as well as computer software, and trademarks to assure orderly commercial development and consumer protection. New systems of intellectual property law protect, for example, integrated circuits and automated databases. Intellectual property also drives the Global Information Infrastructure including the Internet. In each of these areas, the WIPO has worked with member countries to harmonize their legal regimes and to revise their intellectual property law to meet minimum international standards. The WIPO, which today has more than 160 members, was established as a UN agency only three decades ago, but it traces its roots back more than a century. Today, it administers twenty major intellectual property treaties, and it promotes the adoption of needed new treaties. It also works constantly to update existing treaties to make certain that they remain relevant in an age of fast-paced technological change. These treaties include the 1883 Paris Convention on patents and trademarks[2] and the 1886 Berne convention on copyrights.[3]

New York, 10 January 2022 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has joined the UN Sustainable Development Group – gathering all UN entities working to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 – to boost innovation, technology exchange and creativity in addressing some of the most pressing needs of developing countries. These range from urgently closing the COVID-19 global vaccination gap to boosting women and youth entrepreneurship to tackling the existential threat of climate change.

WIPO is the UN specialized agency that leads the development of a balanced and effective international intellectual property (IP) system that enables innovation and creativity for the benefit of all. WIPO runs the worldwide IP networks used by individuals and enterprises around the world to grow their business activities, supporting job growth and national development.

In the international IP context, two types of fragmentation have been observed and studied. Within the complex web of IP treaties, the last twenty years have seen a continuous trend towards bilateral and (mega-) regional norm-setting, especially in form of IP chapters in comprehensive trade or economic partnership agreements (here generally referred to as FTAs). Among the range of questions this form of fragmentation within the IP system raises, research for example has looked at potentially conflicting obligations some states have agreed vis-à-vis different trading partners,47 as well as the relationship between FTAs and multilateral treaties such as TRIPS.48 Those questions essentially concern the law of treaties,49and hence again benefit from a broader public international law perspective. The main concept of fragmentation however concerns the ‘functional differentiation’ and ‘diversification’ of international law into a wide range of legal orders or rule-systems that emanate from like-minded actors co-ordinating across borders in essentially all areas of human activity.50 Where such co-ordination has led to state-sanctioned norm-setting, public international law questions of overlapping and otherwise interacting rule systems arise.51 The variety of interactions between IP and other rule systems (already hinted at above) provide a fertile ground for analysis, for example on relations between rules addressing human rights, investment, environmental protection, biological diversity, cultural heritage, trade, and IP.52 Since the general legal principles like lex specialis and/or lex posterior (commonly advocated as conflict resolution tools) tend to reach their conceptual limits when applied to settings where for example no one rule system can reasonably claim to be the most specific one, alternative approaches beyond public international law need to be developed.

Scholars have proposed a range of methods and conceptual frameworks to better understand and analyse such interfaces.53 For the complex interrelations between, for example, IP, trade, human rights, and investment in the context of tobacco packaging measures, conflict of laws methodologies offer an alternative approach which may be of particular interest for future norm-setting in this area.54 De lege lata, adjudicators might equally draw on PIL tools such as categorization, depecage, comity, ordre public, and mandatory norms—at least as conceptual guidance when considering options to take account of rules that do not form part of their own ‘lex fori’. That is not to say that these multifaceted interfaces can only be properly tackled by resorting to PIL methods—the idea is rather that one should be generally open to alternative frameworks in this context. This is particularly true when looking at transnational IP norms set by private actors, such as content (rather than actual copyright) protection through automated enforcement tools employed by platforms such as YouTube (owned by Google) or Instagram (part of Facebook). Relying solely on a traditional public international law approach here would disqualify private rules as relevant law—and so effectively neglect the global reach of some of these private ordering regimes (whose impact may surpass that of minimum standards set in public international law treaties on IP). On the other hand, simply scrutinizing these regimes from a traditional private (international) law perspective places undue emphasis on (contractual) freedoms that appear unwarranted in light of the impact these regimes have on third parties, in particular internet users.

An international law approach to IP then focuses on instruments and institutions set up by states in order to regulate the use of IP across borders. Against the background of IP rights as private rights granted under domestic law, one however might question whether and how much of this regulation is truly international? When it comes to IP, public international law rules are essentially set out in treaties between states. They prohibit discrimination against foreign IP owners, facilitate registering IP rights abroad, and set minimum standards of protection and enforcement that those owners must be able to enjoy. In general, they do not affect the underlying notion of territoriality of IP rights; nor do they change the private law nature of the relations between an IP owner and anyone using the protected subject matter. While these treaties provide an often global framework of standards state parties are obligated to, as a matter of public international law, implement in their domestic laws, IP protection, and enforcement still essentially relies on domestic private law—unless international treaty rules are designed to be self-executing, and are given direct effect.5

Where countries have allowed their courts or IP offices to directly apply international IP norms, this almost inevitably occurs through a domestic lens: for example, in determining the threshold, under art. 6bis of the Paris Convention, when a trademark is considered to be well-known in the country where protection is claimed. At the same time, national courts interpreting and applying their domestic IP statutes occasionally consider, and take guidance from, public international treaties on IP. In doing so, they nevertheless frequently adopt their own views about what the relevant treaty rules mean for them and the case in front of them.6 Their domestic approaches sometimes directly contradict interpretations WTO Panels have arrived at in what constitutes the first multilateral system of dispute settlement applicable to IP treaties.7 While clarifying the meaning of treaty terms and inducing compliance through WTO dispute settlement could reorient the system’s focal point towards the international, we only have about two handfuls of decisions in the IP context.8 An interesting development here is a new hybrid: ‘private actions’ brought by IP-owning investors against host states under Investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) which may at some point fill the gaps which (so far) WTO dispute settlement has not covered. This alternative mode of international IP protection generates not only an increasing number of adjudicative decisions pertaining to IP, its global enforcement of Awards arguably appears to be more effective than the bilateral nature of counter-measures under the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU).9

Yet if the international community is going to maximize global innovation—something that is critical if we are to make faster progress on commonly shared global challenges such as climate change, disease prevention and treatment, and economic growth—we will need a stronger and more wide-ranging consensus on the importance of IP to every country throughout the world. To maximize the role intellectual property can play in enabling innovation across the world, the countries that best recognize the essential link between the two—including the United States, Commonwealth nations, European Union members, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and others—need to revise and amplify efforts to build out and strengthen the international framework of intellectual property rules, norms, and cooperation. A new way ahead is needed to overcome and move beyond the status quo stalemate that defines the intellectual debate over IP in the global economy, which remains starkly and deeply divided along developed-developing country lines that were largely set 20 years ago with the signing of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

It is noteworthy that one of the five indicators proposed by Ginarte and Park (1997) to measure the intensity of IP protection in a country is membership in international patent treaties, but they did not empirically analyze and elaborate on the rationality of using this as an evaluation indicator. Can signing and entering into international treaties promote international technical collaboration and spillover? Previous studies have led to the conclusion that IP protection policies have a significant effect on foreign technology spillovers in low- and middle-income countries (Xu and Chiang, 2005). Not only is internal legislation important for patent decisions but international treaties can also further stimulate innovation activities and disseminate innovative knowledge to signatory countries by reducing the uncertainty of inventing firms. Additionally, high-tech companies can gain potential advantages in larger product markets by seeking protection in countries that participate in the protocols (Dekker et al., 2012). Multilateral technology agreements have a positive effect on international technology R&D collaboration. Co-inventions are significantly affected by the membership in implementation agreements, and it is, therefore, necessary to establish effective international mechanisms to solve the common problems in international technical collaborations (Haščič et al., 2012).

Developed countries hope to export IP for benefits, while developing countries want to integrate into the international innovation environment to enhance their innovation capabilities. Thus, both have a strong desire to join IP treaties and cooperate with other countries in innovation. Although previous studies consider whether a country or region is a member of IP treaties as an indicator for assessing the intensity of IP protection, these studies have not empirically tested whether IP treaties can truly affect IP protection and thereby promote international innovation collaboration. Using the IP treaties generally recognized by all countries as a test bed, we explore whether there is a positive effect of IP treaties on innovation collaboration to fill in these gaps. Therefore, we raise the following questions in this article: (1) Does a country joining IP treaties leads to more international cooperation with other countries or regions and enhance its importance in international cooperation activities? (2) Are there differences in the impact of different types of IP treaties on international innovation cooperation between developed and developing countries? We examine a set of IP treaties and innovation collaboration networks in different periods to explore the factors underlying innovation collaboration and then apply regression modeling to test for country and treaty differences in the effect of IP treaties on innovation collaboration.

This study examines the influence of IP treaties on the performance of international innovation collaboration using patent data. The results revealed that international IP treaties have a significant positive effect on the importance of a country in international cooperation activities. International IP treaties protect all kinds of IPRs such as patents, trademarks and copyrights, including the IP protection processes, methods and rules mutually respected by all countries. Besides, the international protection of IPRs in international IP treaties can offset the shortcomings of IPRs being protected only at home, providing an institutional guarantee for countries to conduct international innovation cooperation.

Besides, a country's integration into an international innovation environment through IP treaties can enable the country to have more partners, enhancing the country's role in the international innovation cooperation network. This study demonstrates that the impact of the IP treaty on the degree centrality is much stronger and more significant than that on the betweenness centrality inclined to reflect the cohesive role of a country in international cooperation with other countries. The existence of the weaker influence on the betweenness centrality may be related to the fact that IP treaties have made innovation cooperation between countries around the world more frequent, indirectly leading to a decreasing number of countries that do not have a cooperative relationship. These findings may remain open to alternative interpretations. First, a country's accession to IP treaties is likely to strengthen its level of intellectual property protection and help the country acquire more opportunities for international innovation cooperation. Ginarte and Park (1997) confirmed that IP treaties have contributed to the increase in the level of IP protection and regarded whether or not to join IP treaties as one of the crucial indicators for assessing the level of IP protection in a country. In countries with strong IP protection, multinational companies are more willing to choose to cooperate with companies in the form of joint ventures or legal contracts that are considered to be more conducive to promoting innovation cooperation and driving companies to find more partners compared to FDI (Cozzolino and Rothaermel, 2018). In this study, the increase in the degree centrality is essential evidence of IP treaties to promote innovation cooperation, contributing to expanding the international innovation network and accelerating technology transfer and integration among countries. Particularly, the official text of the treaty positively and significantly affected international innovation cooperation. The official text of the treaty usually describes intellectual property protection in detail, while other texts, such as regulations and agreed statements, only supplement the provisions in the official text. Thus, the official text is more effective.

Chair Jerome Powell said Monday that the Federal Reserve is becoming more convinced that inflation is headed back to its 2% target and said the Fed would cut rates before the pace of price increases actually reached that point.

“We’ve had three better readings, and if you average them, that’s a pretty good pace,” Powell said of inflation in a question-and-answer question at the Economic Club of Washington. Those figures, he said, “do add somewhat to confidence” that inflation is slowing sustainably.