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, after a temporary slowdown in the negotiations following the change of government in the United States and the expiry of the US President’s fast-track negotiation authority. The book will provide an assessment of these dynamics in the world’s fastest growing region. It will look at the IP chapters from a legal perspective, but also put the developments into a socio-economic and political context. Many agreements in fact are concluded because of this context rather than for purely economic reasons or to achieve progress in fields like IP law. The structure of the book follows an outline that groups countries into interest alliances according to their respective IP priorities. This ranges from the driving forces of the EU, US and Japan, via Asia-Pacific resource-rich but IP poor economies such as Australia and New Zealand, recently emerged economies with strong IP systems such as Singapore and Korea to leading developing countries such as China and India and ‘second tier industrializing economies’ such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

This book provides a contemporary overview of developing areas of copyright law in the Asian Pacific region. While noting the tendency towards harmonisation through free trade agreements, the book takes the perspective that there is a significant amount of potential for the nations of the Asian Pacific region to work together, find common ground and shift international bargaining power. Moreover, in so doing, the region can tailor any regional agreements to suit local needs. The book addresses the development of norms in the region and the ways in which this can occur in light of the specific nature of the creator–owner–user paradigm in the region and the common interests of Indigenous peoples.

In several major areas of international trade'particularly software and technology transfer'a harmonised regime of intellectual property law is a crucial prerequisite to success. Yet this legal concept appears to be extraordinarily difficult to establish on any agreed-upon basis among countries. And nowhere has the sought-for harmonisation proven more intractable than in the countries of the Asia Pacific region. Intellectual Property Harmonisation in ASEAN and APEC investigates the complex issues that lie at the root of this major block to the unhampered global flow of commerce based on intangible assets. By highlighting the background of Asian legal systems, both in terms of culture and intellectual property systems, the authors suggest how the current obstacles towards greater harmonisation and integration may be overcome. Defining the accepted principles enshrined in TRIPS, the Paris Convention, and other international agreements, the presentation describes the relatively successful European experience and then goes on to develop strategic variations geared to relate more precisely to harmonisation, integration and co-operation in the East Asian region. Among the important elements of the problem (and its potential solutions) discussed in this book are the following: the strong influence of legal culture in the different Asian countries;the limits of IP harmonisation in Europe;the importance of understanding the political and cultural perceptions that prevail in the various Asian countries;the non-uniform approach of different Asian countries due in part to bilateral free trade agreements; andthe experience of patent office cooperation and its potential as a model for smaller countries. The contributing authors have all worked in the IP field for more than a decade and have followed closely the developments of intellectual property law since the advent of the TRIPS Agreement. Their collective expertise includes both academic and practical considerations on IP harmonisation. Intellectual Property Harmonisation in ASEAN and APEC will be of great value and interest to policymakers seeking effective enforcement of intellectual property rights, to international lawyers counseling clients on Asia, and to academics working in the fields of intellectual property or Asian law. MAX PLANCK SERIES ON ASIAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW 10

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have proliferated in East Asia as regional economies rush to catch up with the rest of the world OCo but what difference do they make? This book answers that question by providing an up-to-date assessment of the quality and impact of FTAs in the region. Featuring a collection of papers originally written for the prestigious Research Institute for Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) in Tokyo, it presents contemporary analysis and insights into the evolution of recent FTAs. The book is suitable for use by trade policy negotiators, policy analysts, and people developing business strategies in organizations, as well as graduate students and researchers in the field. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Rules of Origin and Agricultural Trade Liberalisation in Major Free Trade Agreements (249 KB). Contents: Rules of Origin and Agricultural Trade Liberalisation in Major Free Trade Agreements (I Cheong & J Cho); Services in Free Trade Agreements (R Ochiai et al.); Analysis of the Restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment in Free Trade Agreements (S Urata & J Sasuya); A Comparison of the Safeguard Mechanisms of Free Trade Agreements (A Kotera & T Kitamura); Assessing the Economic Impacts of Free Trade Agreements: A Computable Equilibrium Model Approach (K Abe); The Impacts of Free Trade Agreements on Trade Flows: An Application of the Gravity Model Approach (S Urata & M Okabe); On the Use of Free Trade Agreements by Japanese Firms (K Takahashi & S Urata); Impacts of Japanese FTAs/EPAs: Preliminary Post Evaluation (M Ando). Readership: Graduate students and researchers in international trade; trade policy negotiators; policy analysts; business strategy developers."

Contemporary trade policy is increasingly framed in geo-strategic terms. But how much of that rhetoric is reflected in actual policy choices by the EU or its trading partners? This book provides a first systematic study of the broader international context in which EU trade agreements are conceived, negotiated, and designed. Building on a refined conceptualisation of geo-economics, the book develops a cogent framework that combines insights from scholarship on the design of free trade agreements with ideas from foreign policy analysis. Empirically, the analysis focuses on the relations between the EU and the Asia-Pacific. Following the United States’ pivot to Asia and the EU’s Global Europe strategy, China’s backyard has become the main arena in which global powers’ geo-economic strategies overlap. Building on a series of case-studies, combining the perspectives from the EU and its trading partners, the book shows that the rhetoric of geo-economic competition is yet to catch up with the actual negotiation and design of free trade agreements. This volume will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners who want to gain a holistic understanding of contemporary trade negotiations.

The rise of Asia and the dynamics of Asian economic development have impacted global trade relationships and regional cooperation tremendously. While the WTO integrating national economies into global trade regulations has further liberalized trade relationships between developed and developing nations and amongst the emerging economies in particular in Asia, proliferation of free trade agreements in Asia has raised growing concerns regarding the fragmentation of the world economic order. World-renowned experts have here answered a variety of trade related issues ranging from China’s free trade agreements in its neighbourhood, the Tripartite Relationship between China, Japan and Korea, the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation as well human rights and environmental implications of free trade agreements. Contributors are: Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Jianfu Chen, Won-Mog Choi, Ming Du, Henry Gao, Liyu Han, Jiaxiang Hu, Robert Irish, Tomoko Ishikawa, Md. Rizwanul Islam, Kwangkug Kim, Qingjiang Kong, Yong-Shik Lee, Wei Liang, Kuei-Jung Ni, Delei Peng, Yasuhei Taniguchi, Kim Van der Borght, Matthias Vanhullebusch, and Richard N. Watanabe, Shengxing Yu