Key Provisions of GATT
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The key provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) accord, which was approved by the U. S. Congress on December 1, 1994, will slash tariffs globally by roughly 40 percent, extend intellectual-property protection worldwide, and tighten rules on investment and trade in services. It further provides, via a side agreement, to standardize many of the terms of a U. S. patent, which, undoubtedly, will open a broader debate on patent reform. The sweeping world-trade agreement took seven years to negotiate and, although 124 nations have signed the GATT accord, only about 40 nations thus far have given their final approval to its terms. Subsequent to its approval by Congress, the 47-year old GATT will be succeeded, on January 1, 1995, by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which will be charged with the supervision and enforcement of the agreement, and will use the threat of trade sanctions as its club. What GATT will do is provide substantially higher standards of protection, covering a full range of intellectual property rights (IPR) related to patents, trademarks, copyrights, industrial designs, trade secrets and geographic indications, and the rest of the world will be required to adhere to standards similar to those the U. S. already has in place. In the area of IPRs, the agreement provides: more expeditious and vigorous action to resolve disputes; seven year protection for trademarks; 20 year protection for patents; and up to 50 years protection for copyr
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of trade-related intellectual property rights, experts point to four key areas from which U. S. firms stand to gain, and one critical unresolved issue: extended patent protection, where, in the past, foreign countries commonly excluded chemical, pharmaceutical and agricultural products from patent protection, these exclusions are prohibited and meaningful patent protection will be phased in over the next several years; restricted compulsory licensing, where once foreign governments could mandate that a U. S. firm build factories and manufacture their patented products in the foreign country, as a prerequisite for exclusive patent protection there, the accord contains more than a dozen restrictions against this inefficient practice; meaningful enforcement, where it had been typically and especially lax in the Far East and developing countries, the accord requires its members to establish enforcement measures and a system for adjudicating trade disputes; computer software copyrights, whereby computer software will now be protected under copyright laws for literary works, and owners of software and sound recordings can prohibit rental of their products as well as requiring countries to protect existing sound recordings and establi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2295
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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