That’s key to solving existential threats.

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).