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The debate over international intellectual property rights has become an important foreign policy issue for many industrialized countries, and particularly for the United States. U.S. companies complain that they have suffered greatly from the lack of rigorous and uniform international standards for intellectual property rights, and the U.S. government has consequently undertaken to strengthen rights protection--through bilateral consultations with other countries and through multilateral forums such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization. Most developing countries have committed to raising their standards of intellectual property protection, but how quickly they will adopt new standards of protection and what form the standards will take remain open questions.

Intellectual Property Rights in Emerging Markets, edited by Clarisa Long, considers the three geographical regions that present the greatest intellectual property rights problems to U.S. industries--China, Latin America, and India. The authors assess the effects of regional and local factors on levels of protection; describe how trade pacts, domestic interest groups, and development policies affect incentives to protect intellectual property rights; and propose steps to motivate the three regions to improve protection. Their findings and recommendations offer much-needed guidance to the U.S. business community. [more...]