TRIPS solves---trade, ag innovation and econ

TRIPS is remarkable from both the viewpoint of past trade liberalization efforts undertaken under the aegis of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the precursor to the WTO, and from the perspective of international coordination of IPRs as pursued by numerous previous treaties and agreements in the context of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). From the perspective of trade institutions and traditions, TRIPS broke from the past by attacking the somewhat arcane issues of IPRs, an entirely new subject matter. In so doing the agreement reaches beyond the border measures that had been, up to that point, the almost exclusive domain of trade liberalization efforts. The need to justify such a less-than-obvious extension of the reach of GATT was very much emphasized by the carefully worded prefix ‘trade-related’ that was used to characterize the new subject matter. From the perspective of previous international efforts at coordinating national IPR rules, TRIPS is remarkable because it bundled together the main provisions of the major (and hitherto separate) international IPR agreements, because it strengthened the requirements of existing agreements in some crucial areas, and because it included the final package as a required element for participation in the WTO (as part of the ‘single undertaking’ process for ratification). Furthermore, enforcement of international IPRs, essentially nonexistent under WIPO, under TRIPS can rely on the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and on the threat of trade sanctions for noncompliance. This expansion of the scope of WTO activities is likely to have important long-run consequences. As one observer put it soon after the conclusion of the Uruguay round, “The farmers and the issues of agricultural subsidies have the limelight. TRIPS, however, will over time play a bigger role in the global economic drama” (Drahos, 1995).