Once again the United States has accused Pakistan of failing to adequately protect intellectual property owned by both local concerns and the multinational corporations operating here and has again placed it on the "Special 301" Watch List.

The country, it is interesting to note, remains on this list since 1989. The annual report of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued on March 31, 2004 depicts a picture no different from previous years saying Pakistan was the fourth largest source of counterfeit and pirated goods seized by the US Customs Service in 2002.

These goods were mostly media and apparel. Pakistan is, in fact, unable to adequately enforce patents, copyrights, and trademarks for lack of a central IPR regulatory and enforcement body.

India has, however, been placed on 'Priority Watch List' because Indian patent law excludes from protection any invention intended for use or capable of being used as a food, medicine or a drug.

This India has done to protect its vast natural resources from being misused for the sake of profits and also to ensure that food and medicines were available to its population on affordable prices which the multinationals tend to sell on high prices in the name of patents and intellectual property rights.

In China too, the USTR report notes rampant violations of intellectual property rights although the Asian giant has revised its IP laws. The report calls Brazil one of the world's largest pirate markets and the US industry losses in 2002 were more than $771 million.

The European Union has been criticized for denying national treatment to foreign geographical indications in respect of agricultural products and foodstuffs. Ukraine is the only country which has been subjected to sanctions by the US government for persistent failure to check high-level media piracy.

The sanctions worth more than $75 million were imposed on January 23, 2002 and continue to remain in place. The copyright piracy rates in Pakistan stood at 95 per cent for motion pictures and 100 per cent for records and music in 2003.

The CD and DVD losses were estimated at $82 million. It is estimated that eight Pakistani firms produced roughly 180 million illegal disks in 2003, up nearly 275 per cent over 2002 levels. Almost 90 per cent of this production was exported.

Islamabad did enact a patent law in 2000 that protects both process patents and product patents in accordance with its WTO obligations. But, the USTR report says, the 2002 Patent Ordinance weakened the 2000 law by restricting patent filings to single chemical entities, limiting protection for derivatives, introducing barriers to patenting biotechnology-based inventions and establishing a mechanism for compulsory licensing.

This has offended pharmaceutical firms desiring to sell patented drugs in Pakistan. Now at the US behest, Musharraf regime is about to create the Pakistan Intellectual Property Rights Organization (PIPRO) to enforce Trips obligations.

The intellectual property regime as the US has evolved is a unique method to drive out rival players from a market which the US corporations intend to dominate. Originally, the patents were meant to protect inventions and creations and also to encourage research activities.

The precious knowledge was meant to be shared. What has happened over the years is that intellectual property has been monopolized by a few and also made trade-related. The developing countries are being compelled to buy it on expensive rates even if it means an unthinkable tragedy for a large community or nations, as is the case of Aids-afflicted Africa.

Looking back at history of intellectual property rights, one discovers these rights were important to chemical firms in the nineteenth century Europe and to the US and European pharmaceutical companies in the twentieth century.

These companies lobbied their governments for strict regulations on the use of design of patents. They took it for granted that there had to be strong intellectual property rights - the stronger the better.

In the 1980s US, European and Japanese companies set aside their differences and campaigned for the inclusion of an agreement on intellectual property rights in the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.

The result was the Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) which turned out to be a major step in the globalization of standards of patent, trade secrets and trade mark protection. But the US companies felt Trips was far from perfect and sought an even higher set of standards.

According to Prof Peter Drahos, who has conducted several studies on IPR issues, a letter from Pfizer Inc to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in 1994 said: "Many Indians mistakenly believe that if they endorse GATT they will have solved their IP and pharmaceutical patent issue. Not so, particularly if they truly want to create an environment that attracts investment and provides better medicine."

Trips is one of 28 agreements adopted at the end of the Uruguay Round - the negotiations that had begun in Punta del Este in 1986 and culminated in 1994 with the creation of the WTO.

What made the US feel confused was why did other countries agree to Trips? As the world's principal exporter of intellectual property, the US had much to gain from the globalization of IPR but the developing countries happened to lose by accepting the Trips.

For example, Trips requires countries to recognize patents on pharmaceutical products and this has implications for both the cost of patented medicines, as well as the long-term fate of the generic industries in those countries.

Some twelve US corporations were primarily responsible for the lobbying that brought Trips into being. But Pfizer played a key role for it had invested more in developing countries and so saw the generic threat in countries like India.

What was of utmost importance was to link the intellectual property regime to the trade regime. Pfizer led the campaign and scored a rare feat.

One of the nodes that played a pivotal role in the negotiations over intellectual property was the US Advisory Committee on Trade Negotiations (ACTN) which had been created in 1974 by Congress under US trade law as part of a private sector advisory committee system.

ACTN's basic message to the US government was that it should pull every lever at its disposal in order to obtain the right result for the US on intellectual property. There were a lot of possible levers.

Shultz, the then secretary of state discussed the IP issue with prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1985. President Reagan in his message to Congress of February 6, 1986 talked of greater protection for US intellectual property abroad.

The problem facing Pfizer was how to convince the European and Japanese businessmen that it was in their interests for intellectual property to become a priority issue in the pre-WTO trade round.

A solution was found. In March 1986, an Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) was set up which represented thirteen major US corporations and sought a comprehensive agreement.

The IPC sent delegations to Europe and Japan in June-August 1986 to persuade businessmen in those countries. The IPC's efforts bore fruit. The Uruguay Round declaration of September 20, 1986 contained a negotiating mandate on intellectual property rights.

One of the incentives that was held out to developing countries for the successful negotiation of Trips was that the US would desist from using its trade enforcement tools to obtain the standards that it wanted.

The reality turned out to be somewhat different. During the 1990s, the US actually intensified its bilateral activity and used its trade enforcement tools to review the intellectual property standards of several countries and to conclude more bilateral agreements than it had in the 1980s.

In effect, it created without anybody really noticing a global regulatory ratchet for intellectual property. Thus while many areas of business regulation were experiencing during the 1980s and 1990s deregulation, intellectual property was experiencing regulation.

The principle of minimum standards plays a vital role in this strategy. Each agreement contains a provision that one of the parties may implement more extensive protection than is required under the agreement.

This means that each subsequent bilateral or multilateral agreement can establish a higher standard. The US has always preferred bilateral agreements and is often found negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries that it sees as being important regional models.

They include Jordan (2001), Chile (2003), Singapore (2003), Southern African Customs Union, Central America, Morocco and Australia (2004). The focus on FTAs at this time can also be explained in terms of the effective resistance that the US has been facing at the Trips Council over the last several years.

In fact, as Prof Peter Drahos observes, the US wants to bring Trips into line with what is its own domestic position - "virtually anything is patentable." Developing countries are opposed to such a proposition as it lets foreign companies assume the role of what East India Company played in the subcontinent.

The Third World countries are able to resist US proposals in the Trips Council sessions because they are strongly assisted by civil society actors. This effective resistance has led the US to "forum shifting" - first it was World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) where a semblance of democracy goes against the interests of the US, so it shifts to WTO but there too the US fails to obtain a favourable decision, then it opts for bilateral agreements which are the most suitable forum.

The global intellectual property ratchet is precisely the product of a centrally co-ordinated strategy of forum shifting. What the US is globalizing is its domestic standards - standards that meet its own economic needs and fit with its cultural and philosophical traditions.

Strong patent standards may make sense in the US because it has 3,676 scientists and engineers in R&D per million people. But they make no sense in a country like Rwanda that has only 35 per million.