ABSTRACT
In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of the most economically advanced industrialized nations, including the USA and some members of the EU, faced increasing competition in manufactured exports from newly industrializing countries (NICs) in Asia and Latin America. This increasing competition focused attention on domestic policies of these nations that may adversely or (as is often claimed) even unfairly disadvantage American or European trading interests. It is in this manner that the issue of intellectual property rights has become a prominent item on the trade agenda, as refl ected in the extensive provisions on intellectual property in both the Uruguay Round Final Act and the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the very far-reaching ‘TRIP’s-Plus’ provision of more recent Preferential Trade Agreements.
