This project explores how intellectual property (IP) rules and trade-in-services rules interact — and why that interaction matters for New Zealand's economic interests. IP assets such as software, brands, creative content and patented technologies increasingly underpin the services that New Zealand businesses buy, sell and supply across borders. Yet the two international frameworks that govern these areas — one for trade in services, the other for IP — operate largely in parallel, without effective coordination. This creates gaps that can quietly undermine the market access (both domestic and foreign) New Zealand has negotiated in its trade agreements.

1. New Zealand's Trade and IP Context

New Zealand is a trade-dependent economy. Exports of goods and services contribute a substantial share of GDP, and international trade has been a cornerstone of the policy agenda across successive governments.^[1]

Trade in services has been growing in importance. Services now account for almost a third of New Zealand's total exports and generate roughly two-thirds of domestic GDP — from banking and digital services to tourism and screen production.^[2] Meanwhile, IP assets increasingly underpin the value of what New Zealand firms produce and sell. Software, data, brands and creative content are no longer supporting inputs — they are often the core of what is being traded.

New Zealand has built one of the most extensive networks of free trade agreements (FTAs) among small, advanced economies. Agreements now in force include the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP),^[3] the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA),^[4] the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),^[5] and the New Zealand–United Kingdom FTA.^[6] The New Zealand–European Union FTA was concluded in 2023,^[7] and the New Zealand–UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) entered into force in 2025, alongside the ASEAN–Australia–New Zealand FTA (AANZFTA) Second Protocol.^[8] Most recently, New Zealand and India signed a Free Trade Agreement in April 2026, which awaits entry into force.^[9]

These agreements vary in scope and depth, but all include provisions on both trade in services and intellectual property — typically in separate chapters, negotiated by separate teams. The result is a modular structure in which coherence between the two regimes is assumed rather than designed. This project addresses that assumption directly.

2. The Policy Problem: Two Tracks, One Market

Most of New Zealand's trade agreements build on the "single undertaking" concept — a comprehensive package in which countries commit to rules on trade, services, investment and IP together. At the multilateral level, this goes back to the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) and created two parallel frameworks: the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for services liberalisation, and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) for IP protection.^[10]

In principle, these frameworks are complementary — open services markets and strong IP incentives should reinforce each other. In practice, they are rarely read together. Services chapters set out the market access governments have committed to provide. IP chapters set minimum protection standards and enforcement rules. But neither explains what happens when IP rights are themselves an input to — or an output of — the service being supplied.

To illustrate, the NZ–UK FTA includes dedicated chapters on services, digital trade and intellectual property — each effectively silent on the others' effects. The IP chapter prohibits "practices which unreasonably restrain trade or adversely affect the international transfer of technology" (art 17.3(2)), but provides no guidance on how IP rights might limit the supply of scheduled services. Similarly, the NZ–EU FTA's digital trade chapter protects cross-border data flows and prohibits discrimination of digital products, but expressly states it does not affect IP protection and enforcement.^[11] The result is a tidy text that leaves coherence to chance.

The practical consequences are real. IP rules that condition access to essential inputs — software licences, rights to process data, permissions to stream content — can constrain how and where a service is supplied, even where the services schedule is fully open. Territorial copyright licensing, in particular, can mean that a streaming catalogue is unavailable in a market despite there being no quota or prior authorisation requirement in the relevant services chapter. While these are not formal trade barriers, they are upstream IP settings that determine whether scheduled access is commercially realisable.

Addressing these linkages — making them visible, and proposing how to manage them — is the purpose of this project.

3. Project Outputs

The central output is a interactive chart that maps qualitative linkages between IP rights (copyright, patents, trade marks, trade secrets and related rights) and services sectors in New Zealand's Schedule of Specific Commitments under the GATS, using the UN Central Product Classification (CPC v2.1) as the classification framework. The chart distinguishes sectors where IP is a high-salience input — such as software-as-a-service or audiovisual streaming — from those where the link is moderate or lower. Linkages were identified by asking, for each scheduled services sector, which IP rights a supplier must hold or license to operate (input rights) and which IP rights the service generates or trades in (output rights). Each linkage was graded by salience — high, moderate or low — reflecting how directly IP rules affect the conditions of supply. The full methodology is set out in Section III.

Building on the chart, the project analyses four sector case studies:

• Computer and software-related services — how software copyright and patent rules affect cross-border supply.
• Audiovisual streaming — how territorial copyright licensing and content classification interact with open services schedules.
• Transport services — how IP dependencies in mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms affect market access.
• Human health services — how IP standards affect cross-border supply in a sector where services commitments are limited.

The chart and case studies rest on four analytical assumptions, set out in full in Section III. In brief: New Zealand's FTAs build on WTO rules rather than replace them; the GATS applies only in sectors specifically scheduled by Members; the TRIPS Agreement is designed to balance the interests of rights-holders and users, not only to protect; and New Zealand's IP policy is aimed at supporting innovation rather than creating barriers. Together, these assumptions define the scope and conditions of the linkages shown in the chart.

4. Outline

• Section II reviews New Zealand's trade policy and the role of services and IP within it, drawing on policy documents and data from Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa.
• Section III examines the interface between the two regimes, sets out the project assumptions and methodology, and explains the IP–services linkages chart.
• Section IV summarises the case studies and develops policy observations and recommendations.