An alternative framework for the global regulation of intellectual property rights

The paper begins by advancing reasons for why freedom of design over property rights matters to countries. It shows that the international regime for intellectual property protection is increasingly circumscribing the freedom of developing countries to set efficient standards of protection for their economies. The bulk of the paper is devoted to elaborating a proposal for a new framework of intellectual property protection. This framework takes the form of a treaty on access to knowledge that is linked to human rights and that is driven by nodally constituted standard-setting committees that operate on the basis of evidence-based analysis.