Chapter 9 addresses the role of patents in innovation and technology transfer from a comparative perspective. Experience in Asia and Latin America show that, for most developing countries, a strong institutional patent protection alone is not sufficient to enable local innovation and technology transfer. The governments' adoption of a context-sensitive approach with a balance between stringent intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and economic and institutional upgrading in investment in education, research, and infrastructure seems to be necessary to support ASEAN development. A region-wide IPR protection mechanism tends to benefit all ASEAN member states. Particularly, ASEAN should learn from the related IPR clauses in new generation FTAs to accommodate international norms with regional and national rules will be crucial.
