Publication

The end of the 20th Century was marked by a sea change in global governance in the realm of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Whereas countries historically retained substantial autonomy in this policy domain, the 1990s witnessed the establishment of new global obligations regarding national practices for the treatment of intellectual property. This paper focuses on the case of software “piracy” to assess the mechanisms by which the new global obligations for the treatment of intellectual property are transmitted from the international to the national levels. The results indicate that membership in the WTO and bilateral pressures from the US lead to substantial increases in levels of protection in rich and poor countries.