Murray,CJ Kulkarni,SC. "Eight Americas: investigating mortality disparities across races, counties, and race-counties in the United States." PLoS medicine [1549-1277] 3.9 (2006).

"Defending Intellectual Property Rights in the BRIC Economies." American business law journal [0002-7766] 43.2 (2006). 317-.

 

    This article discusses the issue of protecting US intellectual copyrights in the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).  It begins by explaining that these four countries, if all predictions go as planned, will soon have four of the largest economies in the world.  Therefore, a detailed look at the United States IP relationship with these nations is necessary.  The next section of the article gives a brief history of international intellectual property rights followed by a more focused look at the history of US relationships with these four countries and the antagonisms that have resulted.
    After giving this overview, which shows how often the United States has tried to influence the IPR regimes of the four BRIC countries, the article delves into a section entitled, “Coercion as an Ineffective Strategy in Promoting Intellectual Property Protection in the BRIC Countries.”  This section is long and detailed with many examples of statistics showing how the United States has not achieved its goals through means of coercion.  The article explicitly gives statistics for each country.  The culmination of this large number of statistics is to show that not only does coercion not necessarily work, it can often be detrimental to the original goal.  Examples of poor results are given for China and India.
    The final section of this article argues that unilateral initiatives are an understudied method of strengthening IPR regimes in the BRIC countries.  Unilateral initiatives are defined as “a voluntary conciliatory action presented by one party to the benefit of the other.”  Examples of unilateral initiatives that have been successful are then given.
    This article is plainly written with an obvious objective: to endorse unilateral initiatives as opposed to coercion as a way of reforming IPR in the BRIC countries.  This method of change is supportive of a gradual change in the IPR regime in China as it does not expect immediate results and therefore, presents an effective means of carrying through with the project's thesis, which is always an important consideration when proposing an argument.