Standards and technical regulations exist to protect consumer safety or to achieve other goals, such as ensuring the interoperability of telecommunications systems, for example. Standards and technical regulations can, however, raise substantially both start-up and production costs for firms....

Prior to the Copenhagen meeting on developing a new framework for climate-change policy there were sharp differences between the positions of developed and developing countries regarding the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in fostering international technology transfer (ITT)....