Sam Halabi on International Intellectual Property Shelters

My University of Missouri Law School colleague Prof. Sam Halabi‘s new book is getting increased action – with a multi-part online symposium by the Yale Journal on Regulation.  The Cambridge University Press book is titled Intellectual Property and the New International Economic Order: Oligopoly, Regulation, and Wealth Redistribution in the Global Knowledge Economy.

The book expands upon Halabi’s prior work in the context of International Intellectual Property Shelters — these are exceptions to IP protection requirements found in a wide variety of international treaties and agreements.  In the book, Halabi extends his prior analysis and considers the basic questions of how to make intellectual property work well for the least developed nations.

The key contribution that Halibi puts forward here is the grouping together of the variety of exceptions and shelters; aggregating them as a whole canvas; and identifying them as a key aspect of transnational trade regulation.  His work is interesting because of its optimism in describing the success that developing nations have seen in establishing these shelters.  An important element of his analysis is in the recognition that, although international trade regulations might be negotiated at a nation-to-nation level, private firms play an important role in their outcome — and can also be substantially regulated by the outcomes.

Read more from the symposium:

• Introduction to the symposium by Patricia Judd
• Peter Conti-Brown,  The Logic of Institutional Change (considering how private “firms and nation-states alternate in supremacy in policymaking”).
• Katja Lindroos Weckström, Food For Thought (Halabi “creates a bridge between two polarized debates”)
• Jeffrey Pojanowski, Exploring the Regulatory World (“the web of legal actors and norms operating in international IP is bewildering in its complexity”)
• Daniel Hemel, Why do Nations Obey International Law (“it is doubtful that any one theory will fully explain the pattern of international IP shelters that Halabi has observed”)
• Patricia Judd, Duck, Duck, Goose: The Potential Perils of “Intellectual Property” Conglomeration (“I question the societal benefit of restricting [trademarks] through use of international intellectual property shelters.”)
• Chris Walker, International IP Shelters: A Regulatory or Deregulatory Move?
• J. Janewa Osei-Tutu, Basic Needs Approach to IP (“Halabi makes an important contribution by illustrating how international IP regulatory shelters have been effective in supporting human development and helping to achieve the NIEO [the New International Economic Order]”)
• Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, Expanding Shelters into Protective Zones (noting that the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement lacks some of the IP shelters)
• Peter Yu, Key Insights from Intellectual Property and the New International Economic Order  (“the book gives hope to those who work tirelessly on intellectual property reform but remain frustrated by the never-ending demands for higher standards from intellectual property industries and their supportive governments”)