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Industrial property (IP) rights notoriously aim to promote innovation and regulate trade by giving inventors and entrepreneurs exclusive rights over their inventions and brands. These are all good and encouraging reasons to grant monopolistic rights in the form of patents and registered trademarks. What is less known is that IP regimes were once used in the furtherance of economic wars. Indeed, the World Wars which have ravaged the twentieth century were a battle of not just military strength but also economic resilience. And IP rights came to be used as a means to further economic warfare.
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