Intellectual Property and the WTO
One of the most significant developments of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations (1986-94) was the inclusion of intellectual property rights (IPRs) issues on the agenda of the multilateral trading system. The resulting Agreement on Trade-Relate...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/535391484056053530/Intellectual-property-and-the-WTO http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25931 |
| Summary: | One of the most significant developments
of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations (1986-94) was the
inclusion of intellectual property rights (IPRs) issues on
the agenda of the multilateral trading system. The
resulting Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS) is one of three pillar agreements, setting
out the legal framework in which the World Trade
Organization (WTO) has operated since the end of the Uruguay
Round. For the multilateral trading system, TRIPS marked the
departure from narrow negotiations on border measures such
as tariffs and quotas toward the establishment of
multilateral rules for trade-affecting measures beyond
borders. This move reflected underlying trends in
international commerce. Due to the growth of trade in
knowledge and information-intensive goods, the economic
implications of imitation, copying, and counterfeiting had
in many industries become at least as relevant for
international commerce as conventional border restrictions
to trade. Yet the TRIPS negotiations on intellectual
property were marked by significant North-South differences.
Developed countries, which host the world’s largest
intellectual property-producing industries, were the key
advocates for comprehensive minimum standards of protection
and enforcement of IPRs. By contrast, many developing
countries, which see themselves mostly as a consumer of
intellectual property, felt that stronger standards of
protection would serve to limit access to new technologies
and products, thereby undermining poor countries’
development prospects. Not surprisingly, the TRIPS
Agreement remains one of the most controversial agreements
of the WTO.This short paper seeks to provide an introduction
to the main instruments used to protect intellectual
property in section second, the key economic trade-offs of
stronger IPRs in section third, the basic provisions of the
TRIPS Agreement in section four, and recent TRIPS
developments affecting access to medicines in developing
countries in section five. |
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