Law 797-J: International Intellectual Property: TRIPS

Small market economies provide a valuable insight into how a country might balance competing interests in global intellectual property. As developed countries that are also net-importers of intellectual property, small market economies have similar concerns to some developing countries.

This Commentary on the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) provides a detailed textual analysis of TRIPS - a pivotal international agreement on intellectual property rights. TRIPS sets minimum standards for national laws on copyright, patents, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property rights.

The general exception clauses of the TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization permit exceptions to copyrights and to the rights conferred by trademarks, industrial designs and patents.

The TRIPS Agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), signed on April 15, 1994, introduced intellectual property protection into the World Trade Organization's multilateral trading system, and it remains the most comprehensive international agreement on intellectual property to date.

Provides explanations of TRIPS itself, the history of TRIPS, actual cases in which TRIPS has been applied in several countries, and the relationships between TRIPS and other treaties.

With respect to intellectual property regimes, a significant change in international governance rules is mandated by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This topical volume deals with the processes through which TRIPS compliance was achieved in four developing country jurisdictions: Brazil, China, India and Thailand. More importantly, it analyses the macro and micro implications of TRIPS compliance for innovative activity in industry in general, but focuses specifically on the agrochemical, automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. This unique volume will appeal to a wide range of scholars working on development, evolutionary economics and technology.

TRIPS reflects the dominant view that enforcing strong intellectual property rights is necessary to solve problems of trade and development. The global ensemble of authors in this collection ask, how can TRIPS mature further into an institution that supports a view of economic development which incorporates the human rights ethic already at work in the multilateralist geopolitics driving international relations? In particular, how can these human rights, seen as encompassing a whole 'new' set of collective interests such as public health, environment, and nutrition, provide a pragmatic ethic for shaping development policy? Some chapters address these questions by describing recent successes, while others propose projects in which these human rights can provide ethical ground for influencing the forces at play in development policies.This stimulating book will strongly appeal to policy makers, academics, and students seeking to understand how the 'new' human rights can inform efforts to reconfigure intellectual property rights as an engine for fair and just economic development.