Intellectual property in the World Trade Organization

The paper examines the development implications of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and aims to offer suggestions on how to reduce the agreement's development deficit and increase its development friendliness. The paper provides a historic overview of the TRIPS negotiations, the agreement itself and the development deficits therein. It also presents the broader context surrounding intellectual property (IP) issues, namely, on the one hand, the increasing trend towards higher IP standards and on the other hand, the growing insight on the need to rebalance existing IP rules. It also analyses selected aspects of the TRIPS Agreement, highlighting their development implications.