Regulations for Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

C. Rama Lakshmi*, J. Praveen kumar¹, E. Vijay kumar²
* Krishna Teja Pharmacy College, Tirupati, A.P, India
¹Associate Professor, Krishna Teja Pharmacy College, Tirupati, A.P, India
²Assistant Professor, Srinivasa Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Proddatur, A.P, India

A B S T R A C T
The Agreement on Trade related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the WTO is commonly known as the TRIPS Agreement or simply TRIPS. TRIPS is one of the main agreements comprising the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement. This Agreement was negotiated as part of the eighth round of multilateral trade negotiations in the period 1986-94 under General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) commonly referred to as the Uruguay Round extending from 1986 to 1994. It appears as Annex 1 C of the Marrakesh Agreement which is the name for the main WTO Agreement. The Uruguay Round introduced intellectual property rights into the multilateral trading system for the first time through a set of comprehensive disciplines. The TRIPS Agreement is part of the “single undertaking” resulting from the Uruguay Round negotiations. This implies that the TRIPS Agreement applies to all WTO members, mandatorily. It also means that the provisions of the agreement are subject to WTO dispute settlement mechanism which is contained in the Dispute Settlement Understanding (the “Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes”). The TRIPS Agreement is one of the most important agreements of the WTO.
Keywords: TRIPS, WTO, GATT, Trade