New Threats to Intellectual Property Rights


 

Publication Date: March 1990

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Mark A. Franz

Research Area: Law and ethics

Keywords: Trade and foreign aid

Type: Report

Abstract:

Protecting intellectual property is essential to technological and industrial innovation and fundamental to economic growth. Guarantees for patents, trademark, and copyrights produce incentives for creative thinking. They protect innovators and enterprising companies from the theft of their ideas, and provide a financial return for the work that went into formulating and articulating those ideas. Done properly, a GATT-negotiated treaty protecting IPRs would boost trade and economic development not only in theThird World, but in the United States and other industrialized nations as well.