World Trade Organization and TRIPS

This research examines the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). The research will set forth a brief history of how the agreement came into being and then discuss the major sections of the accord, as well as issue fronts that public scrutiny of it has produced, with a view toward forecasting possible lines of development.

The origin of the World Trade Organization can be traced to two treaties negotiated in Paris, one in 1833 and another 50 years later. In 1833 the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property became the first treaty in history aimed at assisting creators of patentable industrial products of one signatory country in obtaining protection "for their intellectual creations" (WIPO, 2001) in the other signatory countries in the form of industrial property rights (i.e., royalties, license fees).

The so-called Paris Union (officially International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property), negotiated in 1883, and the Berne Union (also Berne Convention), negotiated in 1886, represented amplification of, amendment to, and more complex understanding of the realm of intellectual creations. The Paris Union dealt substantively with licensing and royalties on patents, trademarks, and inventions, and the Berne Convention with copyrights (Berne Convention, 2001; World Intellectual Property Organization, 2001). The Paris and Berne Unions were by no means the only intellectual-property treaties

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Category: Economics - W