Maria-Inês Bastos. Published jointly by Frank Cass, London, and the UNU Press, Tokyo, 1994
ISBN 0-7146-4111-1, 198 pages

Abstract
The book is about the conflict that developed from September 1985 to October 1989 between the United States of America and Brazil over Brazil's protectionist policy for the electronics industry. The conflict's development and outcomes are analysed within a descriptive approach to bargaining. The conflict's evolution is described as a process by which a choice among a set of possible outcomes is reached through negotiation between the two players who exchange information, promises, and threats. Regulation of intellectual property rights (IPRs) of software in Brazil was the focal point of the conflict. The effectiveness of sanctions in changing Brazil's software policy was due to the economic losses sanctions could have imposed on Brazilian exports and also to the political effects upon uncommitted interest groups. The adoption of copyright protection for software in Brazil allowed the suspension of American threats of sanctions and led to the end of the conflict. The conflict had a non-zero-sum solution. Brazilian gains were the suspension of the threat of economic sanctions, keeping the protectionist policy for some years, and preservation, almost untouched, of the domestically-controlled electronics industry. American gains were wider access to the Brazilian IT market, the softening of Brazilian opposition in GATT negotiations on new issues, and the international display of what could happen to any other country wanting to emulate the Brazilian policy.