Grievances toward the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have persisted for decades. Recently, these tensions have been further intensified by COVID-19 and the ongoing US-China trade war. The prevailing view underscores how firms from the Global North exercise their intellectual property rights in the Global South and their exclusive legal actions hinder others’ access to new knowledge. My book challenges this view by arguing that intellectual property laws and treaties are designed to promote global access to knowledge, rather than act as its barriers, by means of economic transaction. By conceptualizing knowledge spillovers as a form of externality and applying the Coase Theorem, the book offers deeper insights into the origins of contemporary challenges surrounding intellectual property rights, showing how political, legal, and regulatory institutions drive those conflicts at both national and subnational levels. The book aims to extend scholarly debates on intellectual property rights beyond the conventional North–South divide by highlighting the dual public policy objectives: (1) to promote R&D investment ex ante, and (2) to facilitate cross-border licensing ex post.