Intellectual Property in Trade
How patents, copyrights, and trademarks became a central battleground in international trade, from TRIPS to the COVID vaccine wars.
How IP Became a Trade Issue
Until the 1990s, intellectual property was largely a domestic matter. Countries set their own patent lengths, copyright rules, and trademark protections. That changed with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), negotiated during the Uruguay Round and taking effect in 1995. TRIPS established minimum standards for IP protection that all WTO members must meet: patents must last at least 20 years, copyright at least 50 years after the author's death, and enforcement mechanisms must be available.
The push for TRIPS came primarily from the United States, the European Community, and Japan -- countries whose economies increasingly depended on IP-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals, software, entertainment, and biotechnology. They argued that without global IP standards, companies had no incentive to invest in innovation because competitors in other countries could simply copy their products.