A study on TRIPS implications and challenges for LDCs

Abstract

The adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) represented a global solution to the concerns of protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs). To many, however, the TRIPS approach to globalizing the higher standards of intellectual property has raised some in-built controversies. The major controversy surrounding TRIPS is directed at its ramifications of disregarding the ‘North–South divergent perspective’ on the scope of protecting IPRs. During the TRIPS negotiations, the IPR-using developing and least developed countries (LDCs) vigorously protested against the uniform and strict IPR protection under TRIPS by arguing that such stringent standard-setting would harm their development prospects. Interestingly, the drafting of TRIPS reconciled such concerns by including a range of safeguards and options that World Trade Organization (WTO) members can exploit in their implementation of the Agreement. The conclusion of TRIPS thus results in pushing the developing countries and LDCs to what Carolyn Deere, a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford's Global Economic Governance Programme calls ‘a second battle’, ie the battle of exploiting the flexibilities of the TRIPS.