Most of the world does not live in western countries (As a simplification think Europe, Australia, US, Canada etc).

In general, most of the world's valuable intellectual property has originated from Western countries.

What intellectual property law does is provide a monopoly on selling/producing something to a company or individual. The thing that is interesting about intellectual property is that it is not tangible. If someone is assaulted, or their physical car is stolen- the damage is very real and tangible.

However with intellectual property we have a worldwide system where copying intellectual ideas is equated to the same thing as physically stealing.

For example, imagine I setup a factory that outputs clones of the "Land Rover Range Rover" in East Timor. I may be allowed to sell the vehicle domestically, but exports of the vehicle to "advanced economies" will undoubtably blocked due to IP infringement.

This is a highly questionable practice for a few reasons.

1. Worldwide consumers would benefit for lower prices on Range Rovers 2. The production of Range Rovers in my knock off factory does not prohibit Land Rover from producing their vehicles 3. The special interest groups who benefit from the Range Rover monopoly are much wealthier than the rest of the world, and the monopoly only serves to reinforce that.

Intellectual property is fundamentally a way for the wealthy (people who can afford lawyers) to prevent potential competitors from implementing ideas.

There is no monopoly on differentiating mathematical functions, or calculating the current in an electric circuit. Yet somehow there are laws prohibiting copying designs for integrated circuits. It is all nonsense and the only winners are IP holders and lawyers.