Two controversial U.S. anti-piracy bills have spotlighted the growing challenge of how to protect intellectual copyrights, particularly across international borders, without compromising Internet freedom.

Matthew Slaughter explains how stronger Chinese protection of intellectual property rights could create American jobs.

This study examines low-carbon technology innovation and absorption in China, India, and Brazil. It recommends a course for U.S. policy that promotes accelerated innovation and adoption of new technologies while protecting U.S. commercial interests.

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This module features teaching notes for Reforming U.S. Patent Policy: Getting the Incentives Right by author Keith E. Maskus, along with other resources to supplement the text. This Council Special Report acknowledges the importance of patent protection for innovation but also warns against blind adherence to the mantra that more protection will necessarily produce more innovation.

Since its creation in 1989, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has worked to ensure that its 40+9 Recommendations are recognized globally as the international standards for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). The work of the FATF, covering more than 170 jurisdictions, has had a significant impact on the global detection and prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, and is critical to the implementation of more robust AML/CFT regimes around the world.

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Reforms of the U.S. patent system have made it too easy to obtain and defend patents and more costly to challenge patent decisions, thereby limiting the competition of ideas, discouraging innovation, and ultimately reducing U.S. competitiveness, argues a new Council Special Report.

Keith Maskus, professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of a new Council Special Report on patents, discusses U.S. patent policy with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Maurice R. Greenburg Center for geoeconomic studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This report argues that reforms of the U.S. patent system have suceeded in limiting the competition of ideas, discouraging innovation, and ultimately reducing U.S. competitiveness.

A critique of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's practice of denying patents for new financial services products unless they are connected to the "technological arts." The article shows that this restriction on patentability has no grounding in U.S. patent law or precedent and does little to address the larger and more important issue of dwindling patent quality.

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U.S. trade is increasingly dependent on high-technology and innovation-intensive goods. Many companies share a reliance on innovation and export and, therefore, an interest in ensuring adequate intellectual property protection for their products worldwide. This report examiens the scourge of piracy, which affects the symbols of U.S. economic strength and greatest hope for the future--modern information-intensive industries.

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, also known as the TRIPS Agreement, entered into force on January 1, 1995. The WTO states that the agreement "introduced intellectual property rules into the multilateral trading system for the first time".