trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights
- Guideline or reference source
- WHO Glossary
- Definition
- The WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) attempts to strike a balance between the long term social objective of providing incentives for future inventions and creation, and the short term objective of allowing people to use existing inventions and creations. The agreement covers a wide range of subjects, from copyright and trademarks, to integrated circuit designs and trade secrets. Patents for pharmaceuticals and other products are only part of the agreement. The balance works in three ways: • Invention and creativity in themselves should provide social and technological benefits. Intellectual property protection encourages inventors and creators because they can expect to earn some future benefits from their creativity. This encourages new inventions, such as new drugs, whose development costs can sometimes be extremely high, so private rights also bring social benefits. • The way intellectual property is protected can also serve social goals. For example, patented inventions have to be disclosed, allowing others to study the invention even while its patent is being protected. This helps technological progress and technology dissemination and transfer. After a period, the protection expires, which means that the invention becomes available for others to use. All of this avoids “re-inventing the wheel”. • The TRIPS Agreement provides flexibility for governments to fine tune the protection granted in order to meet social goals. For patents, it allows governments to make exceptions to patent holders’ rights such as in national emergencies, anti-competitive practices, or if the right-holder does not supply the invention, provided certain conditions are fulfilled. For pharmaceutical patents, the flexibility has been clarified and enhanced by the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health. The enhancement was put into practice in 2003 with a decision enabling countries that cannot make medicines themselves, to import pharmaceuticals made under compulsory license. In 2005, members agreed to make this decision a permanent amendment to the TRIPS Agreement, which will take effect when two thirds of members accept it.
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