Intellectual Property Rights

Since the establishment of WTO, the issue of protection and harmonization of Intellectual Property Rights has been gaining momentum. The developed countries have been in particular, keen for implementation of the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement in the developing countries. The main Agreement in favor of stricter and tighter intellectual property and patent rights is that in absence of the same, conducive environment for encouraging innovations cannot be provided. Supporters of universal IPP (Intellectual Property Protection) regimes argue that inventions and innovations take place at a faster rate when patent rights are well-defined and protected legally. Thus they contribute to the process of economic development and hence beneficial for developing countries. The need to balance between enforcement of intellectual property rights and meeting the technological needs of developing countries became a key theme in the Uruguay Round negotiations. This book is the outcome of the papers presented at a Two-Day National Level Seminar on Intellectual Property Rights organized by Department of Economics, Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, New Delhi held in the last week of November, 2006. An altogether 42 papers were presented covering various dimensions on the impact of Intellectual Property Rights and few of them highlighted the conceptual background of IPR, copyrights, trade marks, patent rights and the implication of WTO on various sectors of the economy including agriculture. We hope this book will be very useful to the researchers, policy makers, social scientists to probe further on the role of Intellectual Property Rights in the globalization era.