Intellectual property rights: international overview

The main goal of this paper is to analyze intellectual property rights at the international level and draw conclusions about similarities and differences among international systems. For this purpose, intellectual property rights in the European Union (EU), United States and China were analyzed and compared. The analysis results show that there are common elements of intellectual property rights among the countries analyzed, which is to be expected, since they are all members of the World Intellectual Property Organization. However, certain differences exist, primarily in the degree of implementation and duration of rights. Since the EU and the United States have the most developed systems of intellectual property rights, they have the most to lose by cooperating with countries with poor intellectual property rights systems. On the other hand, during the last few decades, China has emerged as a global leader and important trading partner. Although China is developing its system of intellectual property rights, many provisions are not being applied, or are misinterpreted in international cooperation due to language or other barriers, and this diminishes the desire for investment and technology transfer resulting in economic damage to firms holding original intellectual property rights.