GATT AND TRIPS

GATT The General Agreement on Tariff and Trade(GATT) was an international organization created in 1947 to reduce trade barriers through multilateral negotiations. On Jan 1, 1948 the agreement was signed by 23 countries.

GATT held a total of eight rounds. The ‘Uruguay Round’ was the most recently completed round of GATT negotiations, completed 1994. The Uruguay Round were the establishment of much stronger enforcement mechanisms in the WTO.

WTO VS GATT Nature- The GATT was set of rules, with no institutional foundation, applied on a provisional basis. The WTO is a permanent institution with a permanent framework.

Scope- The GATT rules applied to trade in goods Scope- The GATT rules applied to trade in goods. The WTO Agreement covers trade in goods, trade in services and trade- related aspects of intellectual property rights. Dispute settlement- The WTO dispute settlement system has specific time limits and is therefore faster than GATT system.

TRIPS

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IPR is a legal protection rights given to the creators of new intellectual works (e.g. products, processes, or ideas) enabling them to solely control the production of, distribution of, and profit from such works for some given period of time. They can take a number of different forms, but the most commonly known are patents (for inventions and drugs etc.), copyright (for books, films and images) and registered trademarks (for company logos, slogans and brand names).

TRIPS ‘TRIPS’ stands for Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights It came into force on 1st January 1995 It is an agreement drawn up by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure intellectual property rights are respected within international trade

How does TRIPS work? The TRIPS agreement brings intellectual property rights under one common set of international rules and establishes the minimum levels of protection that all countries within the World Trade Organization must give to the intellectual property of fellow members. The TRIPS agreement can only be enforced by the laws of individual countries; it is not an automatic universal law.

Which countries have to comply with TRIPS? All the members of the World Trade Organization (148 countries in total) will eventually have to act in accordance with TRIPS From 1995, developed countries were given 1 year to ensure their laws complied with TRIPS; developing and certain transitional economies were given five years (to 2000) and least developed countries were given until 2006 (now extended to 2016 in the case of pharmaceutical patents).

How can patented drugs be copied? At the WTO Doha ministerial conference in 2001, agreed that countries with existing patent laws, or those who wished to start copying newer drugs invented after 1995 that had been granted a patent, could do so under a system called compulsory licensing.

COMPULSORY LICENSING It is a government license that enables someone other than the patent holder to copy patented or copyrighted products and processes.

Purpose of TRIPS The purpose of TRIPS, and all intellectual property regulations, is to encourage research and development by rewarding those that come up with innovative products. This applies to generic manufacturers as well as brand-named companies.

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