Unlike other intellectual property agreements, the TRIPS Agreement has a powerful enforcement mechanism. States can be sanctioned by the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Reviews are at the heart of the TRIPS Council`s role in monitoring what is happening under the agreement. This Agreement provides for a review of the provisions of Article 27(3)(b) four years after the entry into force of the Agreement (i.e. 1999). This review is ongoing at the TRIPS Council. Review of Members` implementing rules Members should inform the TRIPS Council of their relevant laws and regulations. This helps the Council to review the functioning of the agreement. The terms of the TRIPS Plus Agreement, which prescribe standards that go beyond the TRIPS Agreement, were also discussed. [38] These free trade agreements contain conditions that limit the ability of governments to introduce competition for generic manufacturers. In particular, the United States has been criticized for pushing protection far beyond the standards prescribed by the TRIPS Agreement.
U.S. free trade agreements with Australia, Morocco, and Bahrain have expanded patentability by mandating the availability of patents for new uses of well-known products. [39] The TRIPS Agreement allows for compulsory licensing at a country`s discretion. U.S. free trade agreements with Australia, Jordan, Singapore, and Vietnam have limited the application of compulsory licenses to emergencies, antitrust remedies, and cases of non-commercial public use. [39] Access to life-saving medicines is a fundamental human right and, as such, trumps all other claims in this case. The reason this issue is so complex and so hotly debated is that in order to satisfy this right, the right must be granted. In other words, in order to fund the development of life-saving drugs, the manufacturers of those drugs must be financially compensated by the users of the drugs they cannot afford in this case. Since access to life-saving medicines is theoretically a fundamental human right, those who cannot afford these medicines should have them provided free of charge or at a reasonable cost. The above argument defines the problem facing the TRIPS Agreement in the context of global public health: the fundamental human rights of people in developing countries must be respected without hindering the development of new medicines that serve to advance the realization of this right. The current copyright and patent standards set out in the TRIPS Agreement come largely from other sources. With regard to copyright, the Berne Convention is at the origin of most of the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement.
The main areas in which the TRIPS Agreement extends Bernese copyright provisions are the addition of explicit protection for software and databases. Similarly, the Paris Convention gave rise to the patent provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, to which the TRIPS Agreement mainly adds implementing provisions. The Berne and Paris Conventions are administered by WIPO. A more detailed overview of the TRIPS Agreement The TRIPS Agreement. is the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date. . all categories of intellectual property covered by Sections 1 to 7 of Part II of the Agreement (Article 1.2). These include copyright and related rights, trademarks, geographical indications, designs, patents, integrated circuit designs, and the protection of undisclosed information. However, the agreement gives countries different deadlines to delay the implementation of its provisions. These deadlines define the transition from before the entry into force of the Agreement (before 1 January 1995) to its application in the Member States. The main transitional periods are as follows: the objective of the TRIPS Agreement is to establish uniform rules throughout the world that ensure adequate standards of intellectual property protection and greater predictability and stability in international economic relations (5).
At this point, it is important to note that the TRIPS Agreement applies to all forms of intellectual property: however, from copyright to trade secrets, this document will focus on the TRIPS Agreement in terms of patent protection; and their impact on the accessibility of medicines. The regulation of intellectual property rights has not always been a priority at the international level. In the second half of the twentieth century, the proliferation of high-tech equipment and the means to replicate it at low relative cost made it imperative to maintain an environment conducive to innovation. Industries that have invested heavily in research and development, such as the computer industry, have had their work hacked by other companies and sold for a fraction of the price offered by inventors. This created a more profitable environment for “second-comers” than for first-comers1 and therefore strongly discouraged innovation. Prior to the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement, international intellectual property rights were governed by the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, which was first drafted in 1883. It was generally accepted in economic and business circles that the Paris Convention was not sufficient to address relevant modern issues in sectors such as information technology and biotechnology: there were few rules for patents, no minimum term of patent protection and no mention of the exclusive rights of patent holders. The TRIPS Agreement is the modern solution to this problem; it was based on the provisions of the Paris Convention and most of the provisions of the Berne Convention relating to the protection of literary and artistic works. On this basis, the TRIPS Agreement has added several other specifications to address the shortcomings described above (5). Any nation wishing to participate in the World Trade Organization was required to amend its intellectual property legislation to comply with the guidelines set out in the agreement, thus creating a uniform international standard for the protection of intellectual property rights. On 14 November 2001, a historic declaration was made by the WTO in Doha, Qatar. Member State governments have agreed on an independent declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and its role in mitigating global public health crises (9).
Three main concerns regarding the TRIPS Agreement were addressed in the Doha Declaration (5). First, there were doubts as to whether Member States would interpret the TRIPS Agreement in a way that promoted public health. In order to dispel these doubts, Member States reaffirmed in paragraph 4 of the Declaration the compatibility of the Agreement with public health and the right of Member States to interpret the Agreement with a view to improving public health crises. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international agreement between all member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It establishes minimum standards for the regulation of various forms of intellectual property (IP) by national governments, as applied to nationals of other WTO member states. [3] The TRIPS Agreement was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) between 1989 and 1990[4] and is administered by the WTO. The TRIPS Agreement has played a central role in the debate on developing countries` access to essential medicines. The TRIPS Agreement is a WTO agreement negotiated in the Uruguay Round negotiations from 1986 to 1994 by WTO Members (80% of the world`s countries and the vast majority of the world`s trading nations) which lays down certain rules on intellectual property rights (5). Once member countries have accepted the provisions, it becomes an official WTO agreement, which must be ratified by the governments of member countries in their own parliaments. As a result, a global standard for the protection of intellectual property is created. Agreements ratified by the WTO set certain minimum standards; Member States reserve the right to go beyond the provisions of the agreements as long as national legislation does not call into question the conditions laid down in the WTO agreements. Paragraph 11 of the Agreement also states that amendments to the TRIPS Agreement will be made to reflect these decisions by June 2004; WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi called the decision a “historic agreement” in a press release.
Panitchpakdi continued: “This proves once and for all that [the WTO] can deal with both humanitarian and trade issues. This particular issue was particularly difficult. The fact that WTO members have managed to find a compromise on such a complex issue is a testament to their goodwill. (5) The Heads of State and Government of the developed countries welcomed this decision as a dramatic development in international intellectual property law. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said that “the protection of intellectual property is the key to the development of new medicines, vaccines and diagnostics that are urgently needed for the health of the world`s poorest people. The United Nations fully supports the TRIPS Agreement, including the safeguards contained therein. (13) Critics of this recommendation may argue that the binding nature of these provisions encroaches on the sovereignty of a nation. However, this needs to be seen in the context of the TRIPS Agreement as a whole. The agreement contains several provisions: patent protection must last at least 20 years; Patenting of the process is not allowed, public disclosure of the invention is mandatory, and so on. .