Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
Susan Sell's book reveals how power in international politics is increasingly exercised by private interests rather than governments. In 1994 the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted the Agreement in Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which dictated to states how they should regulate the protection of intellectual property. This book argues that TRIPS resulted from lobbying by powerful multinational corporations who wished to mould international law to protect their markets.
Customer Reviews:
Review #1: Emergence of TRIPS
2005-11-22 
The purpose of the book is to explain the emergence of a more ambitious global intellectual property regime in the form of the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement - one of several agreements to emerge from the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The main argument is that TRIPS emerged primarily as a result of good organization and transnational consensus building on the part of a small group of leaders of multinational corporations called the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC), and the coincidence of the perceived interests of that group with key governments such as that of the United States. In the last chapter, Susan Sell shows how these circumstances did not exist for other Uruguay Round agreements and that, as a result, those agreements were weaker. She also argues that the TRIPS agreement represents an overly aggressive interpretation of intellectual property rights to the advantage of multinational corporations and that a political backlash against this is already underway.
This is a real contribution to the field for the following reasons. There is a very good overview of the rationale behind the granting of intellectual property rights and a very careful analysis of who wins and loses with strict enforcement of laws protecting intellectual property rights. There is also an unusually detailed analysis of the slow evolution of intellectual property laws in the United States that set up the conditions for a change toward more extensive grants of rights in the last two decades. The analysis of the politics of negotiating the TRIPS agreement is an excellent and original contribution to the growing literature on the Uruguay Round. Finally, there is a very good theoretical discussion, relevant mainly to theorists of international relations, about the so-called "structure-agency" problem.
I would compare this book favorably with Wayne Sandholtz's excellent work, High Tech Europe. It also holds up well in comparison with Laura Tyson's Who's Bashing Whom? I don't think it is a blockbuster book, but rather a solid piece of scholarship in an important and somewhat neglected area and that it will represent a standard for future scholarly work on its subject.
Review #2: Brilliant study of the politics of intellectual property
2003-07-29 
This is a very important and highly topical book, which shows in an accessible and persuasive manner how big business has played a decisive role in guiding the international regulation of intellectual property protection. It should be read not only by scholars and students of international politics, but by all those interested in how intellectual property relates to and impacts on international trade, the global expansion of the US entertainment, software and drug industries, and also the health needs of people in developing countries including those suffering from HIV/AIDS.One of the book's strengths is that it is very well researched, being based on interviews with many of the key players. Another is that the author lets the facts speak for themselves rather than rams home a particular point of view. Nonetheless, the book is bound to make the reader feel indignant in the way that the global intellectual property regime seems to favour the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the poor and powerless. In short, the book is now the definitive guide to the politics of TRIPS, and I recommend it highly.
Review #3: politics of TRIPS
2003-07-24
This book provides a fascinating perspective on the politics underlying the TRIPS Agreement. It demonstrates the unique power that strong, well financed interest groups possess when legislative obligations are made at the international level. Anyone working specifically on international intellectual property issues would do well to read this book.
Review #4: Two pages of content packed into just 188 pages!
2003-07-10 
There must be some value to this thesis, but I haven't found it. A two page summary of TRIPS would have sufficed. |
