TRIPS

TRIPS = Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, part of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)

For more context, see our entry on WIPO

Description

"The TRIPS accord, which came into force on 1 January 1995, sets out minimal standards for IP enforcement. Although the compliance period for these standards has been extended to 2016 for the world's least-developed countries, such standards threaten, nevertheless, to prevent the developing world from enjoying the free flow of ideas and their expression which so aided today's developed nations during the west's industrial age.

Combined with the trend towards extension of IPs in term and scope, TRIPS threatens to sentence the developing world to perpetual bondage by the developed one. Indeed, as Andrew Gowers put it to me on the day in late 2006 that he published his review into British intellectual property law: "[I]f you look at the whole swathe of developing countries, from the successful ones to the poor ones, does the one-size-fits-all approach [compelling adoption of an industrial nation's standard of IP protection] really work? The answer is, it makes no sense." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp)