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The World Trade Organization has been established in 1995 to organise and oversee as well as improve international trade.
The World Trade Organization endeavours to improve regulation of trade between the various member states. It has set and continues to develop frameworks for the negotiation of beneficial trade agreements and to manage disputes amongst member states.
TRIPS, known in full as the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, is one of the international treaties overseen by the World Trade Organization.
The agreement puts down standards for intellectual property governance as applied by the member states. TRIPS came into being as a result of discussions at the GATT meeting – Uruguay Round, 1994.
The TRIPS agreements entails the various requirements to be met regarding copyright, trademarks and designs as well as patents. It covers a wide area of intellectual property law to also regulate the indications of origin, the monopoly rights of the inventors, disclosure of confidential details, and regulations regarding plant varieties. The national laws of the member states should reflect the regulations as indicated in TRIPS.
The significance of TRIPS is that has introduced patent, trademark, design, and copyright regulation to global trading and is to date, the most extensive international treaty on such.
The Doha declaration is used for the interpretation of the TRIPS agreement, indicating its full extent. There has been some criticism on TRIPS regarding the governance of intellectual property as far as it is seen as hindering assistance to AIDS stricken countries in Africa.
Member states are required to provide comprehensive intellectual property rights protection. The countries for instance, must apply the regulation of copyright protection of fifty years after the author has passed away.
Computers programs, under TRIPS, are seen as literary works and as such are governed by Copyright Law rather than Patent Law.
Contact us if you want to register copyright, patent, design or trademark rights for protection in member states of the World Trade Organization.
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