The Global Battle Over Intellectual Property: The Cat-And-Mouse Game of Protection and Enforcement

Governance of intellectual property (IP) at the international level has in recent decades become one of the most contentious issues in international political economy. It is also enormously complex and dynamic. In The Global Battle Over Intellectual Property, the eminent international relations scholar Susan K. Sell focuses on why IP is such a contested field. The reasons are many. The current IP regime’s distributional consequences across countries are highly uneven. There has been a proliferation of international IP forums, sometimes working at cross purposes and striving for different goals. The ever-increasing complexity of the regime raises profound questions about representation and legitimacy. While there is clearly a set of powerful stakeholders, whether they are the right ones or not is an open question.

To address the range of these related issues, Sell focuses on the dynamics driving change and the implications they have for governance and implementing more equitable policies. Throughout, she relies on the metaphor of cat and mouse to explain how the influence of complicated power relations, the strategic use of institutions, and discourse that drive the politics of IP. Combining insights from political economy, law, and sociology, Sell offers new insights into regime complexity and dynamics. Importantly, the framework she develops can be applied to a variety of highly contested issues, including climate change and financial regulation.

Susan K. Sell was Professor of Global Governance and Regulation at The Australian National University and
Professor Emeritus of International Relations at George Washington University. She was the author of
Private Power, Public Law (2003) and co-editor of Who Governs the Globe? (2010).