Harmonisation of Intellectual Property Rules: A Path Towards Global Integration?

Dear Colleagues,

Intellectual property (IP) plays an ever-increasing role in shaping global economic landscapes, requiring increasing efforts to harmonise intellectual property rules across different jurisdictions. Indeed, with growing globalisation comes the battle businesses and innovators have continuously faced: the inconsistency in IP regulations, which more often acts to hinder cross-border trade, innovation, and investment.

Harmonisation offers a way through in making IP laws predictable and more transparent and providing certainty in their legal environment to creators, businesses, and investors alike.

This Special Issue maps the process of harmonisation of IP, its supposed benefits, and its regional and global challenges. While on the one hand harmonisation seems to be a way of ironing out the legal annoyances and promoting international cooperation, on the other hand, it raises serious questions regarding the implication of such changes for the local innovation ecosystem, knowledge access, and proper weighting between IP protection and the public interest.

We invite papers that assess the effectiveness of IP harmonisation efforts, both those driven by international treaties such as the TRIPS Agreement and regional initiatives within economic blocs like the European Union and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization.

We seek papers that would answer some of the following fundamental questions: How does IP harmonisation impact innovation, competition, and access to technology across different sectors? What are the implications for countries at different stages of development? How do domestic and regional IP strategies complement - or contradict - global harmonisation?

The questions go beyond the limits of any specific theory. It speaks to the fundamental practical insight into the design of IP policies that balance out the often-competing interests of stakeholders, including governments, multinational corporations, SMEs, and local innovators. By offering an interdisciplinary analysis, this Special Issue adds to ongoing debates on the future direction of IP law in a growing interconnected world.

Prof. Dr. Suelen Carls
Guest Editor

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• intellectual property (IP) harmonisation
• globalisation
• cross-border trade
• innovation
• investment
• legal frameworks
• TRIPS agreement
• regional IP strategies
• technology access
• development
• competition
• public interest
• economic blocs
• policy design
• international collaboration