Why Jamaica wants to protect champagne: intellectual property protection in EU bilateral trade agreements

During the last fifteen years, bilateral trade agreements have becomeincreasingly more common. All bilateral trade agreements concludedby the European Union and the United States contain standards ofintellectual property protection and enforcement that go beyond theprotection agreed upon in the TRIPS Agreement. This poses importantchallenges to developing countries who are parties to these agreementsbut often do not have the level of development and capacity to undertakeinnovative research which would allow them to take full advantage of thebenefits of strong IP protection and enforcement. This book offers a legaland a political-scientific view on the phenomenon of strong intellectualproperty protection and enforcement in bilateral trade agreements towhich developing countries are parties. After providing a comprehensiveanalysis of the IP rights and obligations contained in recent bilateral tradeagreements concluded by the European Union, this book highlights the IPpolicy-making process in a developing country that has already acceptedTRIPS-plus provisions, being Jamaica and the CARIFORUM region.