home > by publication type > council special reports > Reforming U.S. Patent Policy
Email
| Author: | Keith E. Maskus, Stanford Calderwood Professor of Economics, University of Colorado |
|---|
| Publisher: | Council on Foreign Relations Press |
|---|
Release Date: November 2006
56 pages
ISBN 0876093675
$10.00
Council Special Report No. 19
The liberalization of trade and the increasing influence of emerging markets such as China and India have meant that U.S. innovation is now competing globally. This global competition has raised awareness and concerns not only that our trading partners are lax on patent enforcement, but also that our patent system may not be optimally suited to compete on the global economic stage.
In this Council Special Report, Keith E. Maskus offers a fair, thoughtful, and at times counterintuitive account of this issue. He recognizes the importance of patent protection for innovation but also warns against blind adherence to the mantra that more protection will necessarily produce more innovation. He highlights the numerous friction points in the patent system and recommends policy options to smooth them out and to keep our patent system competitive. While acknowledging concerns about patent infringement in emerging markets, he expresses deep skepticism of U.S. efforts to harmonize patent standards through trade negotiations. In its place, he proposes a grand bargain in which the developed world requires emerging markets to enforce patents in exchange for agreeing to relax efforts to tighten global patent standards.
Part of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Series on American Competitiveness.
To submit a letter in response to a Council Special Report for publication on our website, CFR.org, you may send an email to CSReditor@cfr.org. Alternatively, letters may be mailed to us at:
Publications Dept.
Council on Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10065
Letters should include the writer’s name, postal address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published online. Please do not send attachments. All letters become the property of the Council on Foreign Relations and will not be returned. We regret that, owing to the volume of correspondence, we cannot respond to every letter.
Keith E. Maskus is Stanford Calderwood professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a fellow at the Kiel Institute for World Economics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide. He was a lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank from 2001 to 2002. He was a visiting senior economist at the U.S. Department of State from 1986 to 1987 and a visiting professor at the University of Bocconi in Milan in 2006. He serves also as a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Health Organization, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. His current research focuses on the international economic aspects of protecting intellectual property rights. He is the coeditor of International Public Goods and the Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and author of Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy (Institute for International Economics, 2000).
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
To request permission to reprint or reuse CFR material, please fill out this permissions request form (PDF), referring to the instructions on page 1.
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.