The distinctive features of regional organizations arise from the fact that they strive to integrate a smaller set of countries but they often aim to reach across a wider range of substantive issues than the other international organizations in this book. The regional organizations in this chapter are vastly different from each other but they face the same challenge of integrating members on an almost limitless range of policies. They approach this challenge diversely: the EU has created powerful central authorities, including a bureaucracy and a legal hierarchy between the center and the member states; in contrast, the AU, ASEAN, and the OAS leave most powers of decision in the hands of meetings of their heads of government. These are more typical of regional international organizations in that they could in theory make forceful collective decisions but in practice their main contribution is as a forum in which intergovernmental negotiation takes place.

This chapter considers what arguments can be offered to defend patents (the normative question). It revisits the three types of argument introduced in Chapter 2: the labour, utilitarian and personality arguments.

The WTO is founded on commitments that governments make to each other in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. These rules provide a structure for international trade in which governments are generally restricted in when they can raise tariffs on imports and whether they can discriminate among their trading partners. This chapter examines the contemporary framework for international trade and its main rules, including national treatment, bound tariffs, and most-favored nation, as well as the WTO’s dispute settlement process. The Shrimp-Turtle case provides an illustration of how these rules interact with international politics to create new political dynamics.

The biggest sports events in the world are the Olympics and the World Cup soccer tournament. These huge multinational spectacles are constructed around nationality: competitors represent their countries, each country gets one team, and national rivalries are encouraged. The Olympics and World Cup are remarkable examples of international cooperation and governance. And yet the organizations most responsible for global sports are not public international organizations. They are not public entities at all. The largest global sports spectacles, including the Olympics, the World Cup, the Tour de France, and many others, are controlled by private organizations that have governmental power in the sense that they regulate and constitute the domain of global sports. They have ultimate authority over who participates and on what terms. Their decision-making is usually invisible to the public and comes into view only at moments of unusual controversy such as the doping scandals and corruption. This chapter examines FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. These are the private global agencies responsible for the football World Cup, the Olympic Games, and dispute resolution within the global sports domain.

This chapter outlines the action of passing off. It discusses whether goodwill is a thing (the metaphysical question) and whether passing off enables businesses to own goodwill (the conceptual question).

The WHO is designed to take advantage of the benefits of cooperation on health. It provides a loosely centralized agency where governments can share information about health and threats to health and get assistance in dealing with both new emergencies and long-running problems. COVID-19 provides an illustration of the WHO’s capacity and limits in the face of new threats to health. More than any other organization in this book, the WHO has taken on partnerships with private organizations to fund and organize its programs, and the organization therefore provides an intriguing illustration of the hybridization of global authority between public agencies and private foundations.

This chapter describes how copyright evolved from a right in books, to a right in ’original works’. The chapter considers whether ’works’ are things (the ’metaphysical question’).

This chapter introduces the two types of rights in copyright : economic and moral rights. The chapter considers to what extent these rights are rights of property (the conceptual question).

This chapter continues the discussion of patentability. It discusses what kind of inventions plausibly ought to be owned on utilitarian grounds (the normative question).

This chapter introduces the remedies for IP infringement. It discusses whether the remedies available, particularly the final injunction, mean that IP rights are a form of property (the conceptual question).