ABSTRACT

In the previous chapters, the importance of the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was frequently mentioned. Without exaggeration, this sub-agreement of the WTO can be described as the most controversial international agreement of the second half of the 1990s. While it was hardly known when it was signed within the framework of the GATT negotiations and its effects could only be estimated by a few experts, it quickly advanced to become one of the main points of criticism of the mechanisms and the effects of neoliberal globalisation. The TRIPS Agreement is so important not only because of the subject-matter which it regulates or because of its own objectives, but also because of its effects on other international treaties. This chapter explores the contested character of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and their institutionalisation on the international scale. It begins with an outline of the creation of the TRIPS Agreement and of the tensions and contradictions which are inherent in it (4.1). Second, we analyse the ways in which Southern governments, NGOs, social movements and indigenous organisations have politicised these contradictions since the late 1990s (4.2). This is followed by an examination of the growing importance of ‘‘scale jumping’’ strategies, which for example take on the form of bilateral trade agreements (4.3). Fourth, we explore the ‘‘forumshifting’’ from the TRIPS Agreement to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (4.4), before, in a fifth step, turning to the conflicts which have recently emerged within the WIPO itself (4.5). The chapter ends with some more general observations on multilateralism and hegemony (4.6).

The TRIPS Agreement was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the GATTwhich started in 1986 in Punta del Este (Uruguay), and concluded, along with the latter, in 1994. It contains internationally valid minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property. Besides the GATT and the GATS, which regulate international trade in goods or services respectively,

it is one of the three central multilateral agreements that fall under the umbrella of the WTO. The socio-economic background of the TRIPS Agreement stems from the fact that, during the last decades of the twentieth century, the production and appropriation of immaterial goods has significantly gained importance in the process of the valorisation of capital. This increasing ‘‘knowledge intensity’’ of the economy has strong implications for the issue of property rights: whereas the generation and initial industrial application of new knowledge is a complex and costly process, the imitation of knowledge-intensive goods can be quite easy. Examples include the production of generics in the pharmaceutical sector or the copying of computer software. Hence, the rise of the ‘‘knowledge society’’ has also given rise to demands for a stronger protection of intellectual property: