Strengthening intellectual property rights excludes expanding IPR to new areas.

Jarrod Tudor, “Compulsory Licensing in the European Union,” George Mason Journal of International Commercial Law, vol. 4, Spring 2012, pp. 252, Lexis.

Given the robust amount of trade between the United States and European Union, those practicing law or engaged in international business in the United States and Europe should have a working knowledge of the differences between the two legal regimes on the point of compulsory licensing. One general guideline to help the practitioner operating within both legal regimes is that the tension between the assertion of intellectual property rights and the prevention of the abuse of those rights is more noteworthy in Europe than in the United States. 254 One comment states that the Microsoft Corp. decision itself is a terrific example of the schism between legal approaches found in the European Union and the United States. 255 The European Union has titled the balance toward a more short-term consumer benefit and a lesser level of intellectual property right protection whereas the United States takes a much stronger intellectual property protection approach that sacrifices some short-term consumer welfare. 256 This is despite the fact that the qualifications for gaining intellectual property rights are similar across the United States and the Member-States of the European Union. 257 However, there is commentary that this divergence in jurisprudence between the United States and Europe is recent. 258 This divergence has also recently separated the United States from Canada, its leading trading partner, as Canada has taken an approach to compulsory licensing as a remedy more akin to that of the European Union. 259