Nike Intellectual Property Rights Case Study

The definition of Intellectual Property Rights is an invention created from a person or company’s idea which is then patented for the legal rights to the concept. The apex of the amalgamation of Intellectual Property Rights and the global south is during a September 1986 meeting with the GATT member states in Punta del Este, Uruguay. The Quad (United States, Europe, Canada, and Japan) wanted to push an idea during the eight round of discussions that, “to preserve as much as possible their agricultural protections, to protect their technological and scientific advantages, and to safeguard the well-being of Northern service providers who wanted to extend their reach into the rest of the world.” (Prashad, pg. 105) The G10 originally refused this …show more content…
Nike is a perfect example of the abuse of Intellectual property rights. Nike starts with a design for a shoe or product. This product design is immediately brought to lawyers and the lawyers go through the process of patenting the design. Once the design is patented, Nike goes to a third world country and sells its design in a bidding process to a factory that will use the least amount of labor and production costs. This free market competition is fierce because of the Nike brand Most importantly, Nike never sells the designs of their shoes and the designs of their other clothing products tot eh same factory. This is done so that the workers in the factory can’t unionize to protest their worker’s rights. Since the labor laws in these countries are so poor, Nike only has to pay a fraction of the cost of production if it was done in the United States. The impact of the Punta d Este GATT meeting on today’s intellectual property rights is that instead of the patent insuring the final product of the invention, it insured the entire process including the end result. This made sure that countries could not innovate and use the previous ideas of major corporations to benefit their local