TRIPS Agreement and Developing Countries - Fault lines in the World Trade Organization

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement 1995) has been a very controversial treaty to come out of the Uruguay Round. The Agreement aims to implement common standards for many forms of intellectual property rights. The Agreement also permits countriesto adopt more extensive rights than what are prescribed in the TRIPS Agreement thereby creating two divergent streams in the functioning of this agreement as developed countries have proceeded to enhance intellectual property rights whereas developing countries have been struggling to dilute those rights or to holdthem static. A major criticism of this treaty has been themarginalization of developing countries in international treaty negotiations. This book traces various developments related to thefunctioning of the TRIPS Agreement involving the interaction between developed and developing countries. The critical issues discussed include: the use of compulsory licensing; the localworking; parallel imports; the use of competition policy to dealwith intellectual property monopoly; access to medicines incountries not having sufficient manufacturing capacity. Inaddition, the book discusses the use of the dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization to solve the conflictsresulting from the implementation of various provisions of theTRIPS Agreement.