By 2005, WIPO administered more than twenty treaties in various fields of intellectual property. This includes treaties in the fields of patents, copyright, geographical indications and trademarks, for instance ¹⁵. This also includes procedural treaties such as the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT), which seeks to foster co-operation in the filing, searching, and examination, of applications for the protection of inventions ¹⁶. The PCT allows, for instance, the filing of a single application for any or all member states. The role of WIPO has remained largely unchanged prior to the WTO regime. However, in practice, the 1994 adoption of the TRIPS Agreement in the context of the WTO has significantly changed the institutional landscape including that of the WIPO concerning IPR at the international level. However, while the TRIPS Agreement is, to a large extent, the most visible and contentious part of the IPR system, it has only added layers to existing WIPO-administered conventions without replacing them. As a result, WIPO maintains its central role in the administration of IPR treaties. Further, it seeks to regain the initiative institutionally, for instance, by taking a lead on the question of traditional knowledge protection. The new role of the WTO in intellectual property was formalised through the adoption of a treaty between WIPO and WTO ¹⁷. This agreement seeks to foster co-operation between the two organisations – WIPO and WTO – concerning administrative matters such as notification of laws and regulations, as well as legal and technical assistance, and technical co-operation in favour of developing countries.

Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (hereafter Paris Convention) is an early international IPR treaty, which was revised several times during the twentieth century and whose substantive provisions were essentially incorporated into the TRIPS Agreement. The genesis of the Paris Convention may be traced to the realisation during the nineteenth century that the domestic protection of patents and the impossibility to enforce them abroad was not sufficient in situations such as international fairs where inventions from various countries were displayed. Fairs not only provided an opportunity to showcase inventions but also afforded foreigners opportunities to copy them. The Paris Convention was, therefore, adopted with a view to facilitating the articulation of existing national patent systems. There was no attempt to harmonise existing patent systems or to establish international standards of protection.

Notes and References

¹⁵ This section only examines the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Paris, 20 March 1883 (hereafter Paris Convention). Some of the other treaties include the Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Berne, 9 September 1886, the Agreement for the Repression of False or Deceptive Indications of Source on Goods, Madrid, 14 April 1891 and the Trademark Law Treaty, Geneva, 27 October 1994.
¹⁶ Article 1, Patent Co-operation Treaty, Washington, 19 June 1970, 9 International Legal Matters 978 (1970).
¹⁷ UN-WIPO Agreement.