LuminousVoid

While helping a friend brainstorm a paper for our Multinational IP class, he mentioned to me his bright idea: Iraqi IP law. But it didn’t quite have the multinational angle. So then we had the idea to compare it to our bilateral treaties. The way I understand things, there is a world minimum for protection of IP: the TRIPS standard. However, when the US negotiates a trade agreement with someone, the US usually demands something more than TRIPS. They demand TRIPS+ or ‘TRIPS-plus’. But we have to bargain to get that, people don’t give it up, and aren’t jumping to impose it.

You can guess not just the question but also the answer: Which way is Iraqi IP law going? TRIPS or TRIPS+? I think we can safely guess the latter. I wonder if you could even do some economics and come up with a ‘valuation’ for TRIPS+ (from the treaties) and see what it comes out to in Iraq. What it is that we’re getting for free. Well. Not free, but in exchange for running their country.

Wish I had thought of it myself. Right now I’m between the database treaty and the broadcasting treaty. From cursory google searches, it looks like the database treaty is dead, with Europe protecting DB’s and the US not. I guess the paper topic would be to compare these two and look for a multinational solution.