The world’s least developed countries (LDCs) face unique and complex structural constraints that hinder their economic development and transformation.
High levels of dependence on primary commodities, underdeveloped productive capacity and low productivity levels, chronic shortages of human capital, weak digital and technological capabilities, underdeveloped private sectors and major infrastructure deficits all combine to undermine their socio-economic prospects, hampering their progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and leaving them highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks.
Innovative activity in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), as proxied by data on the protection of various forms of intellectual property rights (IPRs), is limited. While applications for intellectual property (IP) protection have generally increased in LDCs in recent years, they remain very low compared with in developed countries and the global average. Even applications for trademarks, the single most widely used form of IP protection in LDCs fall far below the annual averages globally.
To address these difficulties and deploy IPRs more effectively to stimulate innovation and economic transformation, LDCs need to strengthen their domestic IP strategies, frameworks and institutional structures in ways that align with their local needs and conditions, levels of development and economic structures, as well as their current skills bases and educational capabilities. In addition, LDCs need to build critical minimum levels of productive capacity and technological capabilities to complement these efforts and make full use of formal and informal IPRs, as well as existing flexibilities available to them through the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and other global IP rules and systems.
