The US and EU’s Intellectual Property Initiatives in Asia: Competition, Coordination or Replication?

Abstract

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been a priority for the European Union and the United States. However, over the past two decades, the EU and US have failed to advance their preferred IPRs standards through multilateral forums and have pursued bilateral alternatives instead. How have the EU and US pursued their strategies in this fragmented environment? Looking specifically at the Asia-Pacific, we compare their bilateral initiatives on IPRs across three strategies: treaty-making, coercion and socialization. Through this analysis, we examine whether the EU and US’s bilateral actions indicate regulatory competition, coordination or replication. We find that the overall tendency has been towards replication, which raises questions about the reasons for this redundancy and its policy consequences. As the rise of bilateralism is not unique to IPRs, our findings have implications for global governance more generally.