The Political Economy of TRIPS

Abstract

One of the numerous significant outcomes of the Uruguay Round has been the incorporation of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the multilateral trade agenda, in the form of the TRIPs agreement. Many issues have been raised over such a controversial move, such as: the private rights/public benefits dilemma, the legitimacy of the actual process of the globalization of IPRs whereby private authority has played a pivotal agenda setting role, the function of IPRs in the economic development of developing countries, the incursion of national sovereignty in the realm of IP policy making, the relationship between IPRs and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Transfer of Technology (TOT). However, the concerns related with the governance of TRIPs are not matters of legal technicality and economic calculation as it is widely held by the advocates of the ‘commonsense’ view; instead, this paper attempts to advance the case against the TRIPs agreement on the basis that the aforementioned issues, which involve adjustment processes and uneven distribution of benefits and costs in favour of the owners of knowledge, are politically contestable, just as the nature of IPRs themselves. Hence, by adopting a critical approach, the dynamics of the ideational and material structures underpinning the process, actors, benefits and costs of making IPRs a trade related issue, will be explored.