Copyright, Code and the Architecture of Digital Trade in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Who wrote this code? For a growing share of the software the world trades, a machine wrote part of it, and nobody can say exactly which part. This presentation, given in the panel on “AI Governance, Liability and Market Regulation” at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Asian Pacific Copyright Association, asks what that means for the rules that govern cross-border trade in software. It reads copyright standards, services commitments, digital trade rules and the room each leaves for regulation as one set of folds, and follows them across the Asia-Pacific. Access to the region's markets for computer services is largely open. What sets those markets apart is domestic law, and for now that is copyright. National laws agree where the treaties harmonise or where markets have already shaped the issue. They scatter where the treaties are silent and the issues are new, most of all on machine-written code and AI training. Trade agreements can reserve access for their partners, but copyright protection then reshapes that access. The presentation argues that the rules still fit software written by people, to an extent, but not software written with machines, and that copyright, like any other minimum standard, has become the terrain on which the region's economies compete.