Trips and Trims Agreement

Some areas are not covered by these agreements. In some cases, the prescribed standards of protection were found to be inadequate. Thus, the TRIPS Agreement significantly complements existing international standards. Robert Wade (2003) suggests that, therefore, this represents a “significant narrowing of the development space”: a reduction in the political decision-making autonomy of states, which deprives them of the development paths that others have taken before them. Moreover, the agreement is “vague to those points where imprecision benefits developed countries and precise to those points where precision works against developing countries” (Wade, 2003:630). The obligations of developing countries and the rights of developed countries are both much more enforceable than the rights of developing countries and the obligations of developed countries. For example, despite the clearly articulated objective of Article 66(2) on technology transfer, there is little evidence of sustained efforts by developed countries to meet these commitments (Moon, 2008). Article 40 of the TRIPS Agreement recognizes that certain anti-competitive practices or conditions for licensing intellectual property rights have negative effects on trade and may impede the transfer and dissemination of technology (paragraph 1). Member States may, in accordance with the other provisions of the Agreement, take appropriate measures to prevent or control abusive and anti-competitive licensing practices of intellectual property rights (paragraph 2). The Agreement provides for a mechanism whereby a country wishing to take action against practices involving companies of another Member State may enter into consultations with that other Member State and exchange publicly available non-confidential information on the matter in question and other information at its disposal, subject to national law and conclusion. mutually satisfactory agreements on the preservation of its confidentiality at the request of the Member (paragraph 3). Similarly, a country whose companies are subject to such measures in another Member State may enter into consultations with that Member (paragraph 4).

However, the TRIPS Agreement is based on a certain conception of intellectual property as an idea, and internationalization can be problematic. This may be in the narrower sense that different societies place a higher priority on the common good on a variety of issues, and more broadly, that some forms of “traditional knowledge” (TK), as shared by indigenous communities, do not conform to the codified Western model of individual and exclusive ownership (Michalopoulos, 2003: 17-18). Recent advances in products of biotechnology have highlighted this contrast: for Western proponents, modern genetic research aimed at increasing human well-being is a quite respectable “bioprospecting”, a form of intellectual property that falls within the framework of the TRIPS Agreement. For indigenous peoples, on the other hand, the patenting of frozen resources such as neem extract[ii] can be seen as a form of “biopiracy” and represents the “dishonest repackaging of traditional knowledge to guarantee monopoly rents for biopiracy while excluding the original innovator from a claim of those rents” (Isaac & Kerr, 2004). At present, the TRIPS Agreement does not provide an agreed interpretation of what constitutes traditional knowledge or how it should be protected (ICRP, 2002b:73-87). As in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the TRIPS Agreement deals with fundamental principles. And as in the other two agreements, non-discrimination plays an important role: national treatment (treatment of foreigners no less favourable than their own nationals) and most-favoured-nation treatment (most-favoured-nation treatment) (non-discrimination between nationals of trading partners). National treatment is also a key principle in other intellectual property agreements outside the WTO.

Since the entry into force of travel, it has been criticized by developing countries, academics and non-governmental organizations. While some of these criticisms are directed at the WTO in general, many proponents of trade liberalization also view the TRIPS Agreement as bad policy. The concentration effects of the TRIPS Agreement`s wealth (money from people in developing countries to copyright and patent holders in developed countries) and the imposition of artificial scarcity on citizens of countries that would otherwise have had weaker intellectual property laws are common ground for such criticism. Other criticisms have focused on TRIPS` inability to accelerate the flow of investment and technology to low-income countries, an advantage advanced by WTO members in the run-up to the agreement. World Bank statements suggest that the TRIPS Agreement has not led to a demonstrable acceleration of investment in low-income countries, although this may have been the case for middle-income countries. [33] Trips long patent terms were assessed to determine whether this was an unreasonable slowdown in generic substitute market entry and competition […].