Conclusions

Abstract

We started this study arguing that the institution of intellectual property is complex and highly political. Intellectual property protection is essentially about wealth, and its form and substance have been contested since its very beginning. This study has focused on developments that have unfolded within the trade and IP regimes from the 1980s onwards, particularly on the contests over the interplay between intellectual property, global trade rules and public health that emerged in the late 1990s. The aim was that of understanding and explaining what conflicts lay at the source of contests over IPRs and access to medicines, whose interests are served by the arrangement that is being contested, and how the latter unfold and get resolved, or not. In order to make sense of these developments, I put forward a conceptualisation of regimes which understands them as the loci of greater or lesser but inevitable tension between state and non-state actors, that is, as dynamic and contested processes. This concept places the focus primarily inside the regime in an effort to better understand what goes on inside it, what shapes the behaviour and interest of regime actors, what the contests are about, how these unfold and get resolved and how they interplay with developments in other regimes and beyond. State and non-state actors involved in regime contests have different material interests and normative understandings as to how a particular issue should be resolved, with each actor, or coalition thereof, attempting to convince others of the legitimacy of their preferred view.