Over the past 15 years, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have moved from an arcane area of legal analysis and a policy backwater to the forefront of global economic policymaking. In the 1990s dozens of countries unilaterally strengthened their laws and regulations in this area, and many others are poised to do likewise. At the multilateral level, the successful conclusion of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) elevates the protection and enforcement of IPRs to the level of inviolable international commitment.

The new global system emerging from IPRs comes with benefits as well as costs. Their increasing importance raises international economic policy questions that evoke impassioned and exaggerated claims from both advocates and opponents of stronger property rights in information. In the first economic assessment of the effects of stronger international IPRs in one volume, Keith E. Maskus examines these competing claims through a comprehensive analysis of the economic impacts of extended international protection and partial harmonization of IPRs. He brings together recent studies of various aspects of the issue and performs new quantitative and qualitative analyses. He presents findings that will be applied to a number of important policy questions on the very new phenomenon of IPRs.