TY  - JOUR
AU  - Grossman,Gene
AU  - Lai,Edwin L.-C.
TI  - International Protection of Intellectual Property
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8704
PY  - 2002
Y2  - January 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8704
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8704.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gene M. Grossman
International Economics Section
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4823
Fax: 609/258-1374
E-Mail: grossman@princeton.edu
AB  - We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size, in their capacities for innovation, and in their absolute and comparative advantage in manufacturing. We associate the strength of IPR protection with the duration of a country's patents that are applied with national treatment. After describing the determination of national policies in a non-cooperative regime of patent protection, we ask, Why are patents longer in the North? We also study international patent agreements by deriving the properties of an efficient global regime of patent protection and asking whether harmonization of patent policies is necessary or sufficient for global efficiency.
ER  -