Postwar Strategy Research Of American Foreign Intellectual Property Protection

After the Second World War, relying on its strong political and economic strength the United States was in the ascendancy in the domain of international trade during a very long period. But after the 1970s, American external merchandise trade had a successive deficit almost in the following years, and the deficit began to possess a gradual expanding trend. The degree of the foreign trade dependency of the United States progressively deepened due to the economic globalization, which greatly contradicted the growing trend of the U.S. foreign trade deficit. Meanwhile, the economy of Japan and Western Europe rapidly developed after World War II. America's economic growth rate in 1980s was far behind that of Japan and Western Europe; foreign trade imbalance intensified; government's deficit was rising; the economy proportion in the world's economy also began to decrease. The decline of the America's international competitiveness had become an undisputable fact. However, the superiority of foreign trade was still quite obvious in the domain which related to the intellectual property rights. The greatest advantage of the American economy is technology and human resource.Considering its own trade advantages and the worsening of its international trade balance,the United States believed that the crucial point was that America's abroad intellectual property rights do not get effective protection, which made the United States suffer huge losses. Therefore the United States began to place great emphasis on dealing with the intellectual property protection from a national strategic level.In order to implement the US foreign intellectual protection strategy, the United States have taken three measures. Firstly, the United States modified and improved the domestic intellectual property laws; broadened and strengthened the protection. Those acts have encouraged the development of high technology in the United States and ensured its inside track when handling the intellectual property issues in its foreign trade. Secondly, the United States issued Term 337 and Special 301, which lay direct domestic law foundation for the intellectual property rights protection in international trade. Term 337 forbids any product which infringes on American intellectual property entering the American market and also prohibit any product which has used the effective American patent accessing to the U.S. market. While Special 301 has authorized the United States the rights to take effective sanction measures on the countries which are thought to have intellectual property protection and market access problems, therefore to change the relevant countries'condition in the domain of intellectual property protection and market access.Lastly, the United States also actively encouraged the internationalization of intellectual property protection by bringing the issue of intellectual property rights into the GATT. Through America's efforts, the member countries reached the agreement of the TRIPS which largely makes American intellectual property protection standards become the prevalent international law and also marks that the implementation of the U.S. intellectual property strategy has made a significant progress. In ordre to implement its foreign intellectual property rights strategy, the United States revised and improved its domestic intellectual property rights law, thus to make the U.S. adapt to the new technology revolution, then give full play to its advantages of knowledge innovation and enhance its international competitiveness. At the same time, America's copyright market and trade have also rapidly developed. The issuing of Term 337, of Special 301 and the encouraging of internationalization of intellectual property protection ensured American's dominant place in foreign trade, spurred American export growth and economic development, and also brought the developing countries more challenges and opportunities in international trades under the new situation. America's foreign intellectual property protection strategy has achieved remarkable successes, which give China many instructive revelation.