Andrew Mertha provides a balanced, insightful, and detailed account of the institutional politics of intellectual property in China. Eschewing a narrow focus on technical legal doctrine, Mertha takes us on a masterful tour of the complex regulatory regime charged with making and implementing intellectual property regulations.
Mertha demonstrates with great clarity how organizational politics, institutional structure, administrative hierarchies, overlapping jurisdictions, competing agency interests, and tensions between the central government and local governments have affected intellectual property developments.
This book will put to rest two notions: first, that passing a few World Trade Organization–compliant intellectual property laws will have a dramatic impact on the enforcement of intellectual property rights in China or, by analogy, other developing countries, and second, that it would be a straightforward matter for the central authorities in Beijing, if only they were so inclined, to put an end to fake products and other intellectual property violations.
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