Regime Shifting: The TRIPs Agreement and New Dynamics of International Intellectual Property Lawmaking

Abstract

Challenges to existing methods of international intellectual property lawmaking are becoming more prevalent and more pointed. Those challenges increasingly target the 1994 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (hereinafter referred to as TRIPs, or the Agreement)' which folded into the World Trade Organization (WTO) an enhanced set of patent, copyright, trademark, and other private rights of intellectual property owners. Unlike prior international intellectual property agreements negotiated under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), TRIPs has teeth. It contains detailed, comprehensive substantive rules and is linked to the WTO's comparatively hard-edged dispute settlement system in which treaty bargains are enforced through mandatory adjudication backed up by the threat of retaliatory sanctions.