Intellectual Property and Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific Region

Christoph Antons, Reto M. Hilty

This book is highly topical. The shift from the multilateral WTO negotiations to bilateral and regional Free Trade Agreements has been going on for some time, but it is bound to accelerate after the WTO Doha round of negotiations is now widely regarded as a failure. However, there is a particular regional angle to this topic as well. After concluding that further progress in the Doha round was unlikely, Pacific Rim nations recently have progressed with the negotiations of a greatly expanded Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that includes industrialised economies and developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, recently emerged economies such as Singapore, but also several developing countries in Asia and Latin America such as Malaysia and Vietnam. US and EU led efforts to conclude FTAs with Asia-Pacific nations are also bound to accelerate again,...