Need Intellectual Property Be Everywhere? Against Ubiquity and Uniformity

Intellectual property is more prevalent in every corner of our working and leisure lives. International pressure, through both bilateral treaties and multilateral treaties is causing intellectual property law to standardize at high levels throughout the world. Legal standardization may be beneficial in general but is not so for intellectual property in either the developed or the developing world. The law in developed countries is currently incoherent and itself requires major reconsideration. The imposition of such a defective law on the developing world is helpful to neither side. The paper argues that current intensification and harmonization trends are therefore undesirable, and that retrenchment and diversity in intellectual property law are preferable strategies for both developed and developing countries.