Legal Definitions - World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization that enforces intellectual-property provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty. It comprises the signatories of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations.

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is a treaty that harmonizes and strengthens the intellectual-property laws of its signatories. It links the obligation to protect the intellectual-property rights of other members' citizens with a mechanism for settling international trade disputes. TRIPs was negotiated at the 1994 Uruguay Round of the GATT. More than 130 nations are parties to the agreement.

In the field of patents, TRIPs standardized patentable subject matter to include medicines, required testing for nonobviousness and utility, protected patentees from infringing imports, and all but eliminated compulsory licenses. For example, TRIPs requires countries to provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals for at least 20 years from the date of application.

In response to the agreement, Congress changed patent terms to 20 years from the date of application, widened the definition of infringement to cover offering for sale and importing, and permitted provisional applications to establish priority. These changes aimed to align US patent law with TRIPs requirements.

Articles 1–8 of TRIPs include the basic principles of national treatment and most-favoured-nation treatment. That is, each member must give to the nationals of other members treatment no less favourable than that given to its own nationals, and must give to the nationals of all members the same privileges as are given to the nationals of any member. Thus, subject to certain exemptions, bilateral agreements between members should no longer be permitted.