Digital technology
Digital technology has transformed business models based on IP. A significant proportion of trade in knowledge now constitutes transactions based on licences of IP rights. In addition, IP transactions form an integral part of global production chains. Innovators can access new trading platforms, creating new business opportunities, while increasing attention is being paid to how to make best use of the opportunities provided by the knowledge economy in areas such as sustainable development.
Mapping trade in knowledge
It is essential for policymakers to have a sound understanding of the technological transformation of IP trade so that they can develop trade policies that respond to a digitally transformed knowledge economy.
To improve understanding of issues relating to trade in IP products, the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Secretariat has built on a °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Training Workshop on Trade in Knowledge Products, organized in 2018, to create a co-publication with Cambridge University Press on trade in knowledge, to be published in 2022. It also organized a TRIPS@25 Webinar on TRIPS and Trade in Knowledge in 2021.
The resources in this portal are intended to support °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ technical assistance activities and to inspire ground-breaking research by contributors across the world.
Key resources: Trade in Knowledge
Overview
Thematic overview: Charting the evolution of knowledge flows
Conceptual framework
The shifting contours of trade in knowledge: the new 'trade-related aspects' of intellectual property
How digitization is transforming trade
Intellectual property and digital trade - mapping international regulatory responses to emerging issues
Measuring trade in knowledge
Measuring international intellectual property transactions in a globalized world: current challenges and possible improvements
A missing link in the analysis of global value chains: Cross-border flows of intangible assets, taxation and related measurement implications
Global ebbs and flows of patent knowledge
Sources of knowledge flow between developed and developing countries
Using intellectual property data to measure cross-border knowledge flows
The Global Digital Content Landscape
Cross-border knowledge flows through R&D FDI: Implications for LMMICs
The innovation environment and knowledge diffusion: improving policy decisions through patent analytics
Impact of knowledge flows on trade and development
Global knowledge flows, absorptive capacity, and capability acquisition: old ideas, recent evidence, and new approaches
Trade in intellectual property-intensive goods
Knowledge spillovers through international supply chains
How do patents shape global value chains? International and domestic patenting and value-added Trade
The enforcement of intellectual property rights in a digital Era
The digital creative economy and blockchains: options and prospects for the developing world
Policy, regulatory and legislative frameworks
Streaming of music and audiovisual works
Adapting trade rules for the age of big data
Trade in knowledge and cross-border data flows: a look at emerging digital regulatory issues
Cross-border knowledge flows under international trade agreements: a need for new multilateral disciplines?
The need for a global framework for knowledge transactions: cross border licensing and enforcement
Fitting machine-generated data into trade regulatory holes
The °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Secretariat is looking forward to publishing a second edition of the volume in the future. Interested authors are invited to send any chapter proposals to [email protected], including a short abstract of their proposed chapter, author biographies and any preliminary drafts (if available).
Antony Taubman is Director of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ’s Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division. He formerly directed the Global Intellectual Property Issues Division of WIPO (including the Traditional Knowledge Division and Life Sciences Programme), covering IP and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, the life sciences, and related global issues including public health and climate, the environment, climate change, human rights, food security, bioethics and indigenous issues. He earlier held appointments in the Australian diplomatic service and worked in private practice as a patent attorney, and he has held a number of academic and teaching positions. He has published widely on international IP law and policy, and cognate policy and legal questions. His education encompasses law, international relations, computer science, mathematics, philosophy, classical Greek and theology.
Jayashree Watal was Counsellor in the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ from 2001 to 2019, contributing to work on TRIPS and public health, TRIPS-CBD, Patents, Undisclosed information, Economics of TRIPS, IP and Transfer of Technology, IP and Climate Change, and IP and Competition Policy. She currently holds a part-time Adjunct Professor position at the Georgetown University Law Centre, the position of Honorary Professor at the National Law University, Delhi, and has been a member of the Governance Board of the Medicines Patent Pool, a non-profit organization based in Geneva since 2015. Ms Watal holds post-graduate degrees in both law and economics and, prior to joining the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ, she had more than 22 years of experience in government in India. She represented India at a crucial stage in the Uruguay Round TRIPS negotiations from 1989 to 1990. She is the co-editor of two °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ books: A Handbook on the TRIPS Agreement (Cambridge University Press 2012) and The Making of the TRIPS Agreement (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ 2015). She has also authored Intellectual Property Rights in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ and Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, India and Kluwer Law International, 2001) and several peer-reviewed journal articles on issues related to the law/economics of intellectual property rights.
Lee Tuthill is a senior staff member of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ responsible for telecommunications, ICT services, and electronic commerce. In these areas, she follows policy, regulatory practices, and trends in technology and business models. She is responsible for keeping up to date on how ICT trade and e-commerce developments relate to the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). She frequently conducts multistakeholder national and regional workshops on e-commerce work taking place within the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ. For many years, she has also provided technical assistance to telecommunications/ICT regulators on the implementation of GATS provisions (including the disciplines of the GATS Annex on Telecommunications and the Reference Paper commitments on sector regulation). She also helps governments who are negotiating °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ accession or free trade agreements with the technical aspects of drafting their commitments in the sectors she covers. She has worked at the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ since 1990 and graduated from Columbia University in 1980 with an MA in International Affairs.
Antonia Carzaniga is Counsellor in the Trade in Services and Investment Division at the World Trade Organization (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ). She is an economist with a BSc degree from Bocconi University, Italy, and an MA degree from the College of Europe, Belgium, and the London School of Economics, UK. She has worked in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ since 1998. She is the Secretary of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Council for Trade in Services and deals, inter alia, with issues relating to the movement of natural persons (mode 4), various transport services and e-commerce. She has conducted many technical assistance activities focused on services trade and the disciplines of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, including for economies seeking to accede to the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ. Ms Carzaniga has published extensively on matters relating to trade in services and has contributed to many expert fora, conferences and academic seminars.
Martin Roy is Counsellor in the Trade in Services and Investment Division of World Trade Organization. With the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ since 2002, he has been involved in various functions relating to negotiations, technical assistance, dispute settlement, and policy research. He is the Secretary to the Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services. Between 2014 and 2016, he was senior advisor at the Office of the Chief Trade Advisor for Pacific Island Countries, in Vanuatu. Dr Roy has published widely on such topics as trade in services, foreign investment, and regional economic integration. He co-edited the Research Handbook on Trade in Services, published by Edward Elgar (2016), and Opening Markets for Trade in Services: Countries and Sectors in Bilateral and °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Negotiations, published by Cambridge University Press (2008).
Wolf R. Meier-Ewert is Counsellor in the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division of the World Trade Organization (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ), which is responsible for the administration of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). In this capacity he gives legal advice in relation to intellectual property and the TRIPS Agreement to members and observers of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ and deals with TRIPS-related dispute settlement cases among °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ members. He serves as the Secretary to the TRIPS Council, the governing body of the TRIPS Agreement, and was Secretary to the Special Session of the TRIPS Council, the negotiating group dealing with TRIPS negotiations under the Doha Round. Mr. Meier-Ewert is a graduate of the University of Oxford, UK, where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) and holds a Law degree from the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He has widely lectured on TRIPS and °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ-related matters.
Jorge Gutierrez is a licensed attorney in Panama, specialized in intellectual property. In 2018, he worked as a Young Professional at the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division of the World Trade Organization (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ). In this capacity he supported the work of the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Secretariat with matters relating to The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), by planning, coordinating and delivering technical assistance and capacity-building activities, and assisting in preparations for TRIPS Council meetings, among other duties. Gutierrez holds an MA in Intellectual Property, Social Networks and New Technologies from ESADE, Spain, as well as a Law degree and an MA in Procedural Law from the Universidad Catolica Santa Maria La Antigua in Panama.
Joscelyn Magdeleine is an Economic Affairs Officer in the Trade in Services and Investment Division of the World Trade Organization. His sectoral responsibilities include health-related services and many business services. He is also responsible for the Services Integrated- Trade Intelligence Portal (I-TIP services) database. Before joining the Trade in Services and Investment Division in 2014, he was responsible for trade in services statistics-related issues in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ’s Statistics Group. He notably contributed to the UN Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services. He has participated in many technical assistance and capacity-building activities on GATS as well as on trade in services statistics in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and South Eastern Europe. Before joining the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ in 2003 he worked in the OECD for seven years, mainly on services-related issues.
Andreas Maurer is Chief of the International Trade Statistics Section at the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ. He studied economics with a specialization in public finance and statistics/econometrics at the University of Hohenheim and holds a doctorate (Dr.oec.) in economics. In 1990, he joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. He was editor-in-charge of the Statistical Journal of the UN ECE. Since 1994, he has worked with GATT/°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ. His current interests include measuring trade in services flows, trade in value added and digital trade.
Thomas Neubig was appointed Deputy Head of CTPA’s Tax Policy and Statistics Division in May 2014. He has over 30 years’ experience as an economist in both government and the private sector. He has spent the last 20 years at EY where he founded and lead a group of 34 tax policy economists, statisticians and survey specialists. Mr Neubig is EY’s Director of Quantitative Economics and Statistics, where he serves as an advisor to numerous public and private clients on federal, state and global tax policy issues, including revenue and economic impact. He holds a BA degree in Economics from Kalamazoo College and a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan.
Sacha Wunsch-Vincent is Head of the Composite Indicator Research Section, Economics and Statistics Division, and Co-Editor of the Global Innovation Index (GII) at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He joined WIPO as Senior Economist in 2010 to help set up WIPO’s economics work under the Chief Economist, including the World Intellectual Property Report and the GII. Before joining WIPO, he was an Economist and Co-Leader of the Innovation Strategy Project at the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. Prior to that, he was the Swiss National Science Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC. He is currently preparing a book on ‘Harnessing Public Research for Innovation in the 21st Century: An International Assessment of Knowledge Transfer Policies’ with Anthony Arundel and Suma Athreye for Cambridge University Press. He holds an MA in International Economics from the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, University of Maastricht, and a PhD in Economics from the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. He teaches international economics at Sciences Po Paris and the World Bank Institute.
Andrew W. Torrance is Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, and the winner of a 2015 University Scholarly Achievement Award at the University of Kansas. He received his PhD in Biology from Harvard University in 1997, JD from Harvard Law School in 2000, and BSc from Queen’s University (Canada) in 1991. He joined the University of Kansas School of Law in 2005. Torrance teaches and conducts research in patent law, intellectual property, innovation, food and drug regulation, biotechnology law, biodiversity law, biolaw, and empirical, experimental, and big data approaches to the law. Specific research foci include open, user and collaborative innovation, design, and legal issues surrounding genes, biotechnology, genetically-modified organisms, synthetic biology, conservation biology, and de-extinction.
Lisa C. Friedman received her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her professional career spans work in the biotechnology and software industries, with special expertise in network science. She is a cofounder of PatentVector LLC.
Laurie Ciaramella is Assistant Professor at Telecom ParisTech, and Affiliated Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (MPI). Prior to that, she was Senior Research Fellow at the MPI, affiliated with the Innovation and Entrepreneurship research group. Laurie obtained her PhD in Economics from Mines ParisTech-PSL in 2017. She also holds a Masters degree in Economics of Markets and Organizations from the Toulouse School of Economics. In her research, Laurie conducts empirical studies in economics of innovation, with a focus on the determinants and consequences of markets for technology. She is particularly interested in the interplay of these markets and taxation, digital transformation and firm strategy. Laurie’s PhD dissertation received the Best Dissertation award, finalist of the TIM division of the Academy of Management 2018 in Chicago.
Gaétan De Rassenfosse is Assistant Professor Tenure Track in Science & Technology Policy at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland). He joined the Institute of Technology and Public Policy at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL in late 2014. Prior to that, he was a research fellow then a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne (Australia) from 2010 to 2014. He was affiliated with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the Faculty of Business and Economics. Gaétan obtained a PhD in Economics from the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management in 2010. The overarching objective of Gaétan’s research is to provide the policy environment that best addresses the needs of the knowledge economy. This objective is met by providing sound empirical evidence on research questions related, for example, to intellectual property issues, to the measurement of intangible capital, and to higher education systems to name but a few topics of interest. His work has appeared in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Research Policy and European Economic Review.
Florian Seliger is Senior Researcher in the Innovation Group at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich. In his work on empirical innovation economics, he combines firm and regional-level data with patent data. He is an experienced user of patent databases and innovation survey data. His research interests include knowledge spillovers, technology clusters and the internationalization of R&D. He is a project leader of international projects on patent data, including external collaborations with academic institutions in Switzerland and Germany.
Jacob Dubbert was an extern with the Office of the Chief Economist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He is currently a Research Economist in the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he focuses on researching and forecasting the Colorado and US economies. His research interests include international trade, economic policy and machine learning. Jacob holds an MA in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration from the University of Denver and a BA in Finance from Colorado State University.
Alexander V. Giczy is a Data Scientist (Addx Corporation) with the Office of the Chief Economist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and was previously a patent examiner in the field of aerospace systems. Prior to joining the USPTO, Alex served 25 years in the United States Air Force, holding numerous leadership positions in systems development and acquisition, systems engineering and space operations. His research interests include machine learning, innovation policy and technology development. Alex holds an MS in Business Analytics from the George Washington University, an MA in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a BS in Astronautical Engineering from the United States Air Force Academy.
Nicholas Pairolero is an Economist with the Office of the Chief Economist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. His research interests include the economics of innovation, intellectual property and applied microeconomics. Nick holds a BBA in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, an MA in Economics from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a PhD in Economics from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Erick Oh was, from 2004 to 2019, an International Trade Analyst in the Services Division, Office of Industries, at the United States International Trade Commission, a US government agency tasked with providing information and analysis on issues of trade and competitiveness to the US Trade Representative and the US Congress. While at the USITC, Mr Oh wrote on a wide variety of services trade issues but his particular focus was audiovisual services, including online content. He was a major contributor to many USITC reports, including US–Mexico- Canada Trade Agreement: Likely Impact on the US Economy and on Specific Industry Sectors, Inv. TPA-105-003 (April 2019); Recent Trends in US Services Trade 2018 Annual Report (June 2018); Global Digital Trade 1: Market Opportunities and Key Foreign Trade Restrictions, Inv. 332-561 (July 2017); Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Likely Impact on the US Economy and on Specific Industry Sectors, Inv. TPA-105-001 (May 2016); Recent Trends in US Services Trade: 2015 Annual Report, Inv. 332-345 (May 2015); Digital Trade in the US and Global Economies, Part 1, Inv. 332-531 (July 2013), and Digital Trade in the US and Global Economies, Part II, Inv. 332-540 (August 2014). While at the USITC, Mr Oh also published working papers and trade briefings on a range of topics, including Nigeria’s film industry, and the growing services sectors in India and Vietnam.
Vito Amendolagine is an Assistant Professor in Political Economy at the University of Bari. His research is focused on international trade and development economics. He has an MSc in Economics and Econometrics from the University of Essex, a PhD in Economics from the University of Bari and a PhD in Economics from the University of Glasgow. He has working experience with UNIDO, the London School of Economics and the University of Pavia.
Cristina Chaminade is a full Professor in Innovation Studies at Lund University (Sweden) and Adjunct Professor at Aalborg University (Denmark). She holds a BA and PhD in Economics from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). The focus of her research is on global networks and the processes of knowledge creation and adoption that underpin innovations and the transformations towards sustainable forms of living (economic, social and environmental). She has actively worked on innovation in developing countries such as China, India, South Africa, Thailand and Brazil for over 20 years. She has been an advisor to international organizations such as the European Commission, UNCTAD, OECD and UN-ECLAC. She has published in international journals, refereed books and handbooks in the fields of innovation, development studies and knowledge management such as research policy, industry and innovation, innovation and development and european planning studies. She is editor of the Journal of Innovation and Development, the International Journal of Innovation and the Journal of Sustainability Research.
José Guimón is Associate Professor of Economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and Researcher at the UAM-Accenture Chair in Economics and Management of Innovation. He works regularly as a policy analyst/consultant for international organizations such as the OECD, the European Commission and the World Bank. He sits on the Executive Committee of the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI Forum).
Roberta Rabellotti is Professor of Economics at the University of Pavia and also holds a position as Adjunct Professor at the University of Aalborg. Her research is focused on innovation in developing countries, clusters, global value chains (GVC), and foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinationals. She has published widely in international journals and her last book was Upgrading to Compete: Global Value Chains, Clusters, and SMEs in Latin America (Harvard University Press 2007).
Holger Ernst is full Professor of Business Administration, especially technology and innovation management at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, in Vallendar, Germany. He is a regular Visiting Professor and a member of the Center for Research in Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, USA. He is also Honorary Professor and Principal Fellow within the Faculty of Business and Economics at the Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Ernst has published about 50 papers in the fields of innovation, technology, new product development and intellectual property management in leading journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy and others. He has won multiple research and best teacher awards. He is also a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Product Innovation Management, Creativity and Innovation Management and Journal of Knowledge Management. Professor Ernst is co-founder of PatentSight GmbH, a LexisNexis Company, located in Bonn, Germany. He advises and speaks to corporations worldwide and he supports start-ups as a business angel.
Carsten C. Guderian is Senior Project Leader at PatentSight GmbH, a LexisNexis company, in Bonn, Germany, and Lecturer at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Fürth, Germany. Carsten’s research focuses on patent analytics and patent valuation.
Marco Richter is Managing Director at PatentSight GmbH, a LexisNexis company, in Bonn, Germany. He has been involved in patent analytics for more than 10 years. Marco consults for and collaborates with various firms, for example members of the DAX 30 (Germany), Nikkei 225 (Japan) and S&P 500 (USA).
Lee Branstetter is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Future of Work initiative at the Block Center for Technology and Society. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in 2011–2012. Branstetter has conducted research in the domains of innovation, the economics of intellectual property, international technology transfer and international trade and investment.
Keith E. Maskus is Professor of Economics and former Associate Dean for Social Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He has been a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He is also a Research Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Fellow at the Kiel Institute for World Economics, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Bocconi and a visiting scholar at the CES-Ifo Institute at the University of Munich and the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University. He serves also as a consultant for the World Bank and the World Intellectual Property Organization and recently chaired a panel of the National Research Council on intellectual property management in standards-setting organizations.
Mercedes Delgado is Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Copenhagen Business School and Research Scientist at the MIT Innovation Initiative. She serves as Senior Institute Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School. Delgado’s research focuses on the relationship between the regional business environment and the performance of inventors, firms, regions and countries. She examines the role of regional clusters – geographic concentrations of related industries, firms and supporting institutions – in job creation, innovation, entrepreneurship, inclusivity and resilience. Delgado has developed new methods for defining and mapping industry clusters and the supply chain economy, providing tools to help firms, practitioners and policymakers create regional and national strategies.
Margaret Kyle (PhD, MIT Economics) studies innovation, productivity and competition, including R&D productivity in the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the role of geographic and academic spillovers; the firm-specific and policy determinants of the diffusion of new products; generic competition; and the use of markets for technology. Recent work examines the effect of trade and IP policies on the level, location and direction of R&D investment and competition. She currently holds the Chair in Markets for Technology and Intellectual Property at MINES ParisTech and is a member of the Conseil National de Productivité in France. She is an associate editor at the International Journal of Industrial Organization and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy. She previously held positions at Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, London Business School and the Toulouse School of Economics. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the University of Hong Kong and Northwestern University.
Roberta Piermartini is Chief of Trade Costs Analysis at the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ. Her research focuses on trade and trade policy analysis. Her papers have been published in The American Economic Journal and the Journal of International Economics among others and she has authored various books. She is one of the lead authors and coordinators of the World Trade Report (WTR) and °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ-WBG publications on trade and poverty. She is author of ‘A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Modelling’ (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ 2012) and ‘An Advanced Guide to Trade Policy Modelling’ (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ 2016). She has served the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Dispute Settlement in several Panel and Arbitration cases. Prior to joining the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ in 2000, she was Lecturer in Economics and Statistics at the University of Southampton and Research Fellow in the research division of Confindustria. She has also taught at the University of Geneva and LUISS. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Southampton.
Stela Rubínová is a Research Economist at the Economic Research and Statistics Division of the World Trade Organization (°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ). She joined the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ in 2016 and contributed to several publications, including the annual World Trade Reports. She also co-authored an ILO–°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ publication on Investing in Skills for Inclusive Trade and co-coordinated the World Trade Report 2019 on the Future of Services Trade. Stela’s research topics are at the junction of international economic integration, global value chains, and economic growth. She holds a PhD in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.
Nikolas Zolas is a Senior Economist with the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau. His research interests include entrepreneurship, innovation, technology transfer, intellectual property, R&D and international trade. His work in these areas has been cited in Forbes, Wired, the Washington Post, Vox, and more. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California - Davis and his B.A. from Rice University. Prior to being an economist, Nikolas worked for UBS Investment Bank and founded a non-profit organization.
Travis J. Lybbert, a Professor at the University of California, Davis in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department, has published research on topics in applied microeconomics ranging from poverty dynamics, climate change and childhood nutrition to technology adoption, intellectual property and innovation policy. Collaborating with researchers, students, NGOs, governments, and private firms, he has lived and worked in India, Haiti, and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Europe. He currently serves as Co-Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco before earning his MS (2000) and PhD (2004) in Applied Economics from Cornell University.
Michael D. Smith is a Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his BSc in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) and his MSc Telecommunications Science from the University of Maryland, and received his PhD in Management Science and Information Technology from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Professor Smith’s research uses economic and statistical techniques to analyse firm and consumer behaviour in online markets – specifically markets for digital information and digital media products. Prior to receiving his PhD, Professor Smith worked extensively in the telecommunications and information systems industries, first with GTE in their laboratories, telecommunications and satellite business units, and subsequently with Booz Allen and Hamilton as a member of their telecommunications client service team. While with GTE, Professor Smith was awarded a patent for research applying fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence techniques to the design and operation of telecommunications networks.
Rahul Telang is Professor of Information Systems and Management at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University and at the Tepper School of Business, with an interest in how information and communication technologies, and associated digitization of information impact consumers, business and policies. His research has a particular focus on how digitization (and associated piracy) in copyrighted industries is affecting the incentives of content providers, distributors and users, and the economics of information security and privacy. Dr Telang has published extensively in many top management and policy journals like Management Science, Marketing Science, ISR, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Policy and Management, and NBER chapters. He held senior editor positions at ISR (Information Systems Research) and MIS Quarterly. Dr Telang provides extensive consulting and speaking at various firms.
Keith Nurse is Principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St. Lucia, Senior Advisor on Structural Policies and Innovation at the OECD Development Centre, member of the executive bureau of the UN Committee for Development Policy and former °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ Chair and Senior Fellow at the University of the West Indies.
Erica Smith is a PhD graduate of the University of Agder, Norway and CEO of the Copyright Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers Inc. in Barbados.
Kayla Grant is Development Operations Consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC.
Alicia Shepherd is a creative industries consultant and graduate of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies.
Mary Lafrance is the IGT Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She previously taught at Florida State University, in both the College of Law and the School of Motion Pictures, Television, and Recording Arts. She received her JD with High Honors from the Duke University School of Law, where she served as Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal. She simultaneously earned her MA in Philosophy from the Duke University School of Graduate Studies. Prior to teaching, she clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and practised law for three years with the Washington, DC office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. In addition to her law review articles and book chapters, Professor LaFrance has authored or coauthored six books, including Intellectual Property Cases and Materials (Thomson West 2018), Understanding Trademark Law (Carolina Academic Press 2019), Understanding Intellectual Property Law (Carolina Academic Press 2019), Global Issues in Copyright Law (West 2009), Entertainment Law on a Global Stage (West 2015), and Copyright Law in a Nutshell (West 2017).
Mira Burri is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. She teaches international intellectual property, media, and Internet and trade law. Mira’s current research interests are in the areas of digital trade, culture, copyright, data protection and Internet governance. Mira is the principal investigator of ‘The Governance of Big Data in Trade Agreements’ project, which is sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She consults for the European Parliament, UNESCO and others on issues of digital innovation and cultural diversity. Mira has co-edited the publications Trade Governance in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press 2012) and Big Data and Global Trade Law (Cambridge University Press 2020). She is the author of Public Service Broadcasting 3.0: Legal Design for the Digital Present (Routledge 2015). Mira’s publications are available at: http://ssrn.com/author=483457.
Nigel Cory is an associate director at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation covering trade policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. He focuses on cross-border data flows, data governance, intellectual property, and how they each relate to digital trade and the broader digital economy. He previously worked as a researcher in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to that, he worked for eight years in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which included positions working on G20 global economic and trade issues and the Doha Development Round. Cory also had diplomatic postings in Malaysia, where he worked on bilateral and regional trade, economic and security issues, and in Afghanistan, where he was the deputy director of a joint US–Australia provincial reconstruction team. Cory holds an MA degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a BA degree in international business and commerce from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
Lucas Spadano is a partner at the Brazilian law firm Fialho Salles Advogados, focusing on international trade regulations, intellectual property and competition law. He is a PhD candidate in International Law (USP), currently taking part in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ PhD Support Program. He has an LLM (with merit) in International Business Law (London School of Economics); he also has Executive MBA (Fundação Dom Cabral); Bachelor of Laws (UFMG); and Bachelor of International Relations (PUC Minas) degrees.
Luiza Tângari Coelho is a Senior Associate at the Brazilian law firm Fialho Salles Advogados, focusing on intellectual property law, data protection and commercial agreements. She has an LLM in Commercial Law (University of Cambridge); she also has Specialization in Intellectual Property Law (University of South Africa/WIPO) and Bachelor of Laws (UFMG) degrees.
Jacques de Werra is Professor of Contract Law and of Intellectual Property at the Law School of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He authored a doctoral thesis in Swiss and comparative copyright law, which he completed as a Visiting Scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich in 1996. He then practised law in Switzerland, before obtaining an LLM degree from Columbia Law School in New York City in 2001 and being admitted to the New York bar in 2002. Jacques researches, publishes and discusses on topics related to various aspects of intellectual property law, contract law, particularly on the commercialization of intellectual property assets with the use of transfer of technology, licensing and franchising, IT and Internet and digital law, as well as alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for IP and technology disputes.
Jeff C. Dodd is the Director of the BBG Information Policy Institute, Houston, Texas. He is the author of Modern Licensing Law (Thomson West 2019) and a new edition of Drafting Effective Contracts (Wolters Kluwer 2020), both of which he previously co-authored with the late Professor Raymond T. Nimmer of the University of Houston Law Center. He and Lorin Brennan are updating Professor Nimmer’s Information Law and The Law of Computer Technology (both with Thomson West 1985) and are planning new editions for both. He has written and lectured extensively on licensing and information law topics, has been an adjunct at the University of Law Center and has been a lecturer at Beijing Normal University. He is currently a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, LLP.
Peter K. Yu is Regents Professor of Law and Communication and Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he previously held the Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law at Drake University Law School and was Wenlan Scholar Chair Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China. He served as a Visiting Professor of law at Bocconi University, Hanken School of Economics, Hokkaido University, the University of Haifa, the University of Helsinki, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Strasbourg.
Thematic overview: Charting the evolution of knowledge flows
The shifting contours of trade in knowledge: the new 'trade-related aspects' of intellectual property
This chapter charts the evolution and diversification of trade in knowledge that has taken place in the quarter-century since the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ TRIPS Agreement came into force. Entirely new markets have come into being, potentially redefining the very character of ‘trade’. The disruptive effect of digital technology has led to much of the content – formerly conceived of as ‘added value’ embedded in physical carrier media, traded and measured as ‘goods’ – can be traded in the form of specific licences that use IP rights covering the content that is increasingly accessed online in digital form. These new forms of exchange in valuable intangible content confront fundamental assumptions about the nature of trade and its interaction with the IP system, forcing a rethink of what constitutes the ‘trade-related aspects’ of intellectual property. The issues examined include the principle of territoriality of IP rights and the segmentation of markets according to national jurisdictions; the structuring of cross-border commercial exchanges into the two discrete categories of ‘goods’ and ‘services’; the emerging disparity in regional trade agreements between provisions on digital IP standards and on digital products and e-commerce; and the significance of IP rights being treated as assets in investment treaties. Whatever formal or legal overlay is applied to these new trading arrangements – it is essential to understand that this is now trade in IP licences as such, rather than trade in goods that have an IP component as an adjunct or ancillary element. TRIPS came about at a time when economic growth theory incorporated intangible knowledge as an endogenous factor, rather than maintaining it as exogenous to models of growth. Trade policy must similarly work to incorporate an understanding of the trade in IP licences itself within cross-border commercial exchanges as an integral element of international trading relations: sale and licensing of IP rights can then be considered ‘endogenous’ to trade. This is essential for an accurate empirical picture of trade relations today, given the economic significance both of dispersed global value chains and of trade in ‘pure’ IP content as such particularly in the creative sectors.
How digitization is transforming trade
This chapter looks at the ways new digital trends and technologies have stimulated the information component of services trade and consequently enhanced trade in goods and services that embody knowledge. It illustrates the role that ICTs have taken on as conduits for digital and digitallyenabled trade and describes recent digital developments such as cloud services, large scale data analytics, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, robotics, and three-dimensional printing. It presents the relevant trade data and then covers, in broad strokes, the landscape of policy challenges that governments confront as they seek to adapt, and examples of ways trade negotiators have begun to shape new legal frameworks. The rise of such technologies and corresponding growth in services that trade internationally by means of the global movements of information has led policy makers to believe a new or enhanced legal regime could be needed. Not always well understood, digital trends can lead to exaggerated fears and cataclysmic predictions. Over-reaction to these transformations can hold the risk of disproportionate policy responses, which may harm not only trade, but also the sharing of knowledge across borders. One significant challenge, the article nevertheless raises, is that international trade rules are founded on the premise that national governments can implement them at or within their borders. Yet, many of the policy and legal responses that arise from an unanticipated shift in services trade from commercial presence to crossborder supply, have a variety of interjurisdictional consequences. Therefore, whatever trade rules may be employed, existing or new, the article concludes that enhanced efforts at collaboration among governments will be needed to complement and coordinate national initiatives.
Intellectual property and digital trade - mapping international regulatory responses to emerging issues
This chapter explores how regulatory responses to emerging IP issues in digital trade may develop at the international level and in particular how existing mechanisms might influence the chances of developing internationally agreed rules in this regard. The primacy of state sovereignty in intellectual property up to the late 19th century gave way to the important WIPO treaties, which still retained some independence of member states and based international regulatory responses directly on national experience. While more regulatory sovereignty was ceded in TRIPS, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, the adoption of non-binding instruments (such as the WIPO Joint Recommendations in the area of trademarks) show the limits of decision making by consensus. International non-state solutions such as the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have introduced separate, technically determined solutions to specific IP issues. Proliferating free-trade agreements (FTAs) have emerged as a new platform to agree to IP-related regulatory responses that can be used to project the national solutions of a few dominant FTA-partners. However, these FTAs have also served to give legally binding status to internationally agreed non-binding recommendations. These diverse approaches are apparent in recent IP-regulatory responses to emerging digital issues that are particularly relevant for digital business models, including inter alia Internet service provider (ISP) liability, “safe harbour” provisions and the issue of orphan works, where there appears to be less agreement. Still further behind to reaching any kind of agreement are the emerging issues of online exhaustion, data mining and IP-related questions of artificial intelligence.
Measuring international intellectual property transactions in a globalized world: current challenges and possible improvements
Trade in IP products (IPP) has grown rapidly over the past decades and at an accelerating pace in recent years. Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the possibilities offered by digitization and new business models, have widened opportunities for such trade, shaping production networks in goods and services and global value chains. This paper describes the importance of such trade. It depicts current concepts and methods used to compile official statistics in a global value chain environment and to describe characteristics of traders in IP products. In considering what we ca learn from cross-border knowledge flows from IMF Balance of payments data and other statistical frameworks, it concludes with an outline for a way forward to improve the information base.
A missing link in the analysis of global value chains: Cross-border flows of intangible assets, taxation and related measurement implications
Global fragmented production and associated trade in intermediate products has changed how economists study globalization and how new public policies are shaped. This creates a need for understanding cross-border flows of disembodied knowledge, often associated with intellectual property (IP). However, data on these international IP-related knowledge flows, specifically, cross-border payments for use of IP, are distorted. The chapter shows how tax planning by multinational enterprises has seriously distorted the measurement of cross-border IP flows, with tax-induced mismeasurement potentially exceeding 35% of global Charges for Use of Intellectual Property (CUIP), and more for individual countries, particularly high-taxrate countries. This chapter describes the trend of increased cross-border trade in ideas, assessing the main data sources and distortions to these flows. The chapter analyses the tax effects on cross border IP measures and the magnitudes and trends in the tax distortions. It concludes with some possible avenues for reducing mismeasurement distortions, directed at national statisticians, national tax administrations, policymakers and analysts, and academics.
Global ebbs and flows of patent knowledge
We use patent citation data to map the flows of technical knowledge, and in particular to test three hypotheses. First, that the net flow of technical knowledge tends to be from more developed to less developed countries. Second, that the trajectory of climate change-mitigation knowledge flow increased (especially from developed to developing countries) after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Third, that the trajectory of pharmaceutical knowledge flow increased after the conclusion of the TRIPS Agreement. We find that massive amounts of technical information are exchanged, among countries around the world, in sometimes surprising patterns. Developed country patents supply a disproportionate amount of patent citations compared to patents from developing countries, and the importance of technical knowledge thereby transferred is disproportionately high. However, we observe some evidence that this imbalance in knowledge flow may be beginning to reverse itself, as developing country patents have become increasingly cited by those in developed countries, and the importance of developing world patents has grown. We did not discern evidence that the Kyoto Protocol has spurred knowledge flow in climate-mitigation technology, but found some preliminary evidence consistent with an effect by the Paris Agreement. We did find evidence consistent with the possibility that the TRIPS Agreement may have spurred pharmaceutical (and more general) knowledge flow.
Sources of knowledge flow between developed and developing countries
This chapter provides a long-term view on the sources of knowledge flow between developed and developing nations. It relies on patent data to explore three potential sources: R&D collaboration, technology sourcing, and technology transfer. All three sources provide a very consistent message. First, knowledge flows with East Asia, particularly China, are occurring more frequently. Second, knowledge flows are increasingly concentred in information and communication technologies. Third, the United States & Canada had traditionally larger patenting activity with Asia than Europe, but the share of activity between Europe and Asia has been increasing in recent years. Fourth, larger patenting activity between the United States & Canada and Asia implies that the U.S.–Canada region is more likely to benefit from reverse knowledge flows as China progresses towards becoming a technological leader.
Using intellectual property data to measure cross-border knowledge flows
This chapter surveys the landscape of empirical studies on cross-border trade in knowledge that use data on intellectual property rights (IPRs). Our discussion critically evaluates whether these data support the empirical findings in the studies by identifying where IPRs data are particularly useful and where these data have limitations. Additionally, we discuss the potential value of making greater use of IPRs assignment data. The goal of the chapter is to provide a reference to help policymakers evaluate the trade in knowledge literature, particularly the interpretation of IPRs-based evidence for policy decisions.
The Global Digital Content Landscape
This chapter focuses on recent developments in the digital content industry. It begins with a brief discussion of the data limitations that challenge the analysis of this market, and continues with overviews of the key characteristics, important trends, and competitive landscapes in each of the major digital content sectors – video games, video on demand (VoD), digital music, and e-publishing (primarily e-books). The chapter ends with a short summary of intellectual property rights issues or barriers that are currently affecting the global digital content industry.
Cross-border knowledge flows through R&D FDI: Implications for LMMICs
R&D related foreign direct investments represent a powerful mechanism for cross-border knowledge sharing that can stimulate the process of technological catch-up. However, low-income countries and smaller middleincome countries remain largely excluded from this kind of global flows of knowledge. In this chapter, we discuss the motivations and implications of this type of FDI for low- and middle-income countries, building on a critical review of the existing literature, and analyze the trajectory of R&D FDI during the period 2003-2017 by region and industry. The data is used as a point of departure to discuss potential policies specially tailored for low- and middle-income countries and their capacity to attract and anchor R&D related FDI for technological catch up. The chapter concludes with an outline of a future research agenda.
The innovation environment and knowledge diffusion: improving policy decisions through patent analytics
The introduction of intellectual property standards under the 1995 °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ TRIPS Agreement aimed to facilitate secure cross-border knowledge transfer. Standardized international patent data available to policymakers and managers can trace specific knowledge flows, for example those that occur frequently via mergers and acquisitions. Mergers shape current as well as future knowledge flows, for example by inter alia affecting the incentives and capabilities to innovate. Regulatory authorities in Europe have begun to examine these merger-related impacts on future knowledge flows to prevent potentially negative effects on consumers. One of the key challenges is how to measure these knowledge flows more accurately to make better decisions on important mergers. This chapter reviews an actual application of such a merger-related analysis of future knowledge flows: the European Commission’s approval decision of the Dow/DuPont merger. It shows how to measure relevant knowledge flows by means of novel patent analytics, moving beyond conventional patent indicators. In addition, it presents patent analytics using these novel patent measures to depict other potential analyses tracing and assessing knowledge flows in different contexts. It also shows where new knowledge has originated and how it has spread to other geographical regions. Countries are clearly interdependent when it comes to knowledge flows. It demonstrates how policymakers and managers can use future-oriented, quantitative patent analytics to improve policy decisions related to cross-border knowledge flows and innovation.
Global knowledge flows, absorptive capacity, and capability acquisition: old ideas, recent evidence, and new approaches
In this chapter, we reconsider the key lessons presented by more than two decades of empirical research on international knowledge flows. We begin by reviewing some of the key empirical findings and policy lessons from that literature. We then build on this review by pointing out the importance and uneven distribution across developing countries of absorptive capacity, which may help explain the uneven diffusion of knowledge across these countries. We also consider the implications of growing R&D globalization, the potentially declining importance of international manufacturing value chains, the rise of global trade in services, and the new opportunities opened up by AI-enhanced learning technologies.
Trade in intellectual property-intensive goods
Intellectual property rights are common, if controversial, components of trade agreements, and existing evidence on the effects of the introduction of IP rights is mixed. We assess the extent to which the TRIPS Agreement is associated with an increase in trade of knowledge-intensive products. Our approach compares how trade in IP-intensive goods changed relative to trade in a control group of products following a country’s compliance with the TRIPS Agreement. This allows us to isolate the effect of IP protection from changes in trade that result from other aspects of °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ membership, such as reductions in tariffs and improved terms of trade. We also explore differences across IP-intensive sectors, and differences across countries. We find that adoption of the TRIPS Agreement is associated with increased trade in IP-intensive products in both developing countries and highincome countries. Overall, developing countries have seen greater access to innovation exported from the most innovative countries, and these countries have also participated in the global market for innovative products through their own exports.
Knowledge spillovers through international supply chains
Patents and scientific publications are a public source of codified knowledge. To benefit from this knowledge in their research and development, firms often need to have access also to its non-codifiable part that diffuses only via face-to-face communication and direct transfer. This chapter shows that international supply chains can facilitate access to foreign non-codified knowledge and thus provide a boost to innovation through international knowledge spillovers. Using industry-level R&D and patent data for a sample of 29 countries for the period 2000–2008, we estimate the importance of knowledge that is diffused and absorbed thanks to international production linkages. We show that production linkages are especially conducive to knowledge spillovers when firms in the knowledge-receiving country are both sourcing from and selling to the international supply chain. In addition, we find that not only countries at the technology frontier, but also middle-income countries can benefit from research spending abroad. Finally, our results suggest that knowledge diffusion has become less localized as international supply chains have become more global.
How do patents shape global value chains? International and domestic patenting and value-added Trade
Intellectual property plays an important role in the global economy through its impact on technology diffusion, knowledge transfer and competition. As production has become fragmented into coordinated processes that span the globe, the role of patents has evolved. Patents can transmit technical knowledge and facilitate upstream and downstream licensing arrangements, thereby increasing the flow of intermediate and final goods and catalyzing knowledge spillovers across sectors and regions. We exploit an algorithmic concordance that links patents to industry and product classifications to estimate how patents affect the organization and structure of Global Value Chains (GVCs). Using the World-Input Output Database as the basis for various GVC measures, we find that increased international patenting inflows are associated with greater value-added production, but that this positive effect is driven entirely by industries in high-income countries. We also find some evidence of heterogeneity in these effects by region and sectorspecific R&D intensity. We conclude with discussion of important limitations of this exploratory analysis and implications for future research.
The enforcement of intellectual property rights in a digital Era
While the recent diffusion of broadband Internet access has significantly improved the productivity of users, it has also made it hard to enforce intellectual property for digital goods like movies and music. Internet access makes it easy for users to infringe digital content and has undermined the property rights of creators. We first provide evidence and review methods adopted by researchers to quantify the revenue losses in these industries and outline the challenges in quantifying these numbers. We then discuss how poor enforcement of intellectual property undermines creators’ incentives to create the goods and innovation, hurting society’s broader wellbeing. We review current research in this space and discuss the respective roles of government, rights holders, ISPs and platforms in enforcing the rights. The role can be demand side (where demand of infringing goods is reduced) or supply side (where supply of infringing content is reduced). We outline the short term and long term effectiveness of various policies and stakeholders in different counties.
The digital creative economy and blockchains: options and prospects for the developing world
The creative sector has emerged as a critical driver of digital trade and generates significant opportunities for economic diversification and competitiveness in developed and developing economies. The expansion of the digital creative economy creates not just new and alternative business models, it also generates new markets, which make creative industries a critical resource for economic development. This chapter assesses the challenges and opportunities for creative industries in developing countries, especially as it relates to making the transition to a digital creative economy and to the adoption of blockchain technologies which have the potential to address structural challenges such as big data management, financial inclusion and integration into global value chains.
Streaming of music and audiovisual works
As digital dissemination has become an increasingly important means of exploiting music and audiovisual works, this has necessitated reform in copyright and related rights regimes in order to enable rightholders to receive the compensation to which they are entitled without unduly burdening users’ ability to benefit from these innovative services. The legal regimes that govern streaming of music and audiovisual works in the United States and the European Union have already undergone considerable change to address these concerns, and further changes are likely in the future. In the United States, recent reforms have focused on protecting the rights of music and sound recording creators to receive compensation for the use of their works by licensed streaming services. However, the unlicensed digital dissemination of music and audiovisual works remains a serious problem, leading some observers to criticize the broad scope of the safe harbours that protect Internet intermediaries. In the European Union, recent reforms have focused on two areas: (1) facilitating cross-border licensing of digital dissemination in order to further the goal of a digital single market, and (2) protecting rightholders against unauthorized digital exploitation of their works. On the latter point, the recently adopted DSM Directive subjects Internet intermediaries to a greatly increased risk of infringement liability, in stark contrast to the strong safe harbours they continue to enjoy in the United States.
Adapting trade rules for the age of big data
The chapter looks at some of the disruptive changes brought about digital technologies that matter for trade and trade policy. It then analyzes the responses that trade policy has formulated to address these changes. The chapter focuses in particular on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP), as the most advanced model so far and one that has now found continuation in the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). The chapter goes on to contextualize and assess the impact of the existing legal framework, as shaped almost predominantly by free trade agreements. The chapter ultimately asks whether there are better ways to address the challenges of the data-driven economy and what the essential elements of a working regulatory model may be.
Trade in knowledge and cross-border data flows: a look at emerging digital regulatory issues
In contrast to the international trade issues around the movement of goods that defined 20th century globalization, trade in the 21st century is increasingly digital and knowledge-based, in large part, as digital technologies enable data-driven innovation, the ongoing disaggregation of production, and the increasing trade in services. Modern trade is more about the movement of bytes, ideas, information, and services, which are subject to a variety of non-tariff policies that affect digital and digitally enabled trade. However, the ever-growing gap between technological innovation and domestic and international policy frameworks shows that many policymakers are struggling to adapt rules and norms to today’s digital economy, which detracts from the potential economic and social benefits of these technologies. In the years ahead, policymakers will face a key choice in deciding whether they want to be bold and adjust policies in order to embrace a truly global market for digitally enabled trade in goods and services.
Cross-border knowledge flows under international trade agreements: a need for new multilateral disciplines?
Cross-border knowledge flows occur in many ways and are increasingly important for the world economy. In terms of international trade rules, knowledge flows are covered by different disciplines, both at the multilateral and at the plurilateral or bilateral levels. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a basic understanding of how such trade rules may affect crossborder knowledge flows. The chapter then discusses – particularly, in the light of new trends identified in recent plurilateral and bilateral agreements – whether the current multilateral disciplines are sufficient to regulate and encourage cross-border knowledge flows, or whether new trade rules to further promote such flows are needed.
The need for a global framework for knowledge transactions: cross border licensing and enforcement
Knowledge-based IP transactions are of vital importance to the modern global economy. The IP and information products that trade by license are no less important to this century than goods were to the last (and are now). Yet, there is still no recognized, general statement of the commercial legal principles dealing with the unique but common transactional form of license (like the unique transactional form of sale) and the unique but common qualities of knowledge-based intangibles. Various private ordering regimes have emerged to address discrete types of transactions, whether by industry or other groups. One form of private ordering – “information law merchant” – covers only a limited number of participants who routinely trade in certain types of information assets. Effective participation in many forms of international commercial IP transactions often requires access to specialized legal knowledge, extensive commercial experience, and elaborate contract forms, creating barriers to entry for new actors, disadvantaging smaller firms, increasing transaction and performance costs, and fostering disputes. Another form of private ordering relates to FRAND licensing. Recent developments show a piecemeal and equally fragmented development of FRAND licensing terms and conditions (beyond the issue of the financial remuneration or royalties) provides no firmer foundation for addressing the general commerce in IP assets. In short, the authors believe that, just as international organizations created to foster global commercial trade and finance analyzed and fashioned frameworks of contractual principles for sales of goods and secured financing, those international organizations and the organizations created to foster intellectual property protection and access should undertake a project to address the general principles relating to international IP commercial contracts.
Fitting machine-generated data into trade regulatory holes
In an era when the Internet of Things has slowly transformed into the ‘Internet of Everything’, data generated or collected by networked sensors, interconnected devices, and intelligent machines have been highly valuable. In October 2017, the European Commission proposed a new sui generis data producer’s right for nonpersonal, anonymized machine-generated data. If countries began to create new rights in these data – whether based on the EU proposal or other proposals – the cross-border flow of such data would raise questions about the need for new trade standards. In view of this emerging trade policy debate, the present chapter highlights two sets of challenges concerning the development of new trade standards for regulating the cross-border flow of machine-generated data: (1) national policy development and (2) international norm setting. The chapter begins by identifying five sets of policy questions that have to be addressed before the creation of a new national regime for the protection of machine-generated data. The chapter then turns to the potential complications that would arise in the international norm-setting arena. Taken together, these two sets of challenges show how the protection, regulation, and overall governance of machine-generated data may not fit well with the existing international trade regime.
Looking forward
This chapter recapitulates and puts into their broader context the contributing authors’ diverse insights into trade in knowledge today, the gaps identified in conceptual understanding and empirical data, and the prospects for addressing these gaps. A stronger empirical and theoretical platform can support further policy dialogue and research, but requires improving the reach, quality and granularity of statistics, and analysing available data in more sophisticated ways, including through greater integration of different forms of data (such as measures of the value and trends of trade as a proxy for knowledge transactions, and more nuanced interpretation of IP statistics). Policy and legal analysis need to ‘unbundle’ the knowledge component from various proxies for it (such as trade in IP-rich goods, trade in knowledge-intensive services, and trade in IP rights for such goods as software and creative content), and distinguish the component of global value chains comprised of IP transactions. This would provide a surer foundation for policymakers to identify and implement positive opportunities to leverage indigenous knowledge resources and incoming knowledge flows for sustainable development and welfare-enhancing trade and economic policy, and address anomalies such as taxation distortion and flawed assumptions about the true economic value of knowledge-based trade in goods and services. These developments pose challenges for policy coherence and international governance, given the diversification of approaches at domestic level and in the emerging patchwork of bilateral and regional agreements, contrasting with the policy coherence and interoperability between jurisdictions that the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍø×ÊÁÏ TRIPS Agreement has brought about over the past 25 years. Multilateral institutions – founded on the principle that international cooperation is positive-sum in character – may seek to update and consolidate the governance framework for knowledge flows, or at least work towards informed policy coherence and dialogue, supported by a forward-looking research agenda and guided by the inherently nonrivalrous character of technological knowledge