From the previous survey, some broader trends can be identified
First, at least on paper, TRIPS and the other international agreements have led to a
shift in intellectual property law from “rule by decree” to “rule of law”. With low
numbers of domestic applications, the importance of foreign investment and rising
licensing fees, intellectual property and technology transfer law of course affects the
development plans of governments in developing countries. In the past, a preferred
way to deal with this was to introduce only as much protection as was absolutely
necessary in the form of government regulations that did not need the approval of
parliament and did not attract much public discussion. They used to leave a lot of
discretion to government bureaucrats implementing the regulations and they could
easily be amended or changed. Under these circumstances, the transparency of the
various national systems was low. While it seems unlikely that government
preferences for a rather obscure system have really changed, the TRIPS obligation to
increase transparency of intellectual property systems has had the result that crucial
pieces of legislation and court decisions are now made publicly available38, generating
much more debate in public. Importantly, various NGOs and local private sector lobby groups have entered the arena, so that intellectual property protection is no
longer an exclusive discussion between foreign rights holders and development
oriented governments.