Intellectual Property Rights Negotiations in the Uruguay Round
On the basis of the disenchantment with the WIPO process on the part of countries seeking strong IPR protection, the ministerial declaration launching the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations included as one of the subjects for negotiations the elaboration of new rules and disciplines for IPR with a view to reducing impediments to international trade while ensuring adequate protection of IPR3. The main issue during the first part of the negotiations was to overcome the strong opposition on the part of some big developing countries, such as Brazil and India to the shift of the negotiating forum for IPR from WIPO to GATT 4.
Overall, the position of opponents like India progressively changed from real opposition to acceptance of the package that was finally proposed in 1993. At first, India argued with other opponents that the protection of IPR had no significant relationship with international trade. The position of the Ministry of Commerce in 1989 was, for instance, that there should be no attempt to extend the patent laws of developed countries to developing countries and those standards, which could be relevant to the former and may be inappropriate to the later, and should not be imposed on them. India, following the financial crisis of 1991 and the new economic policies of the erstwhile government, progressively softened its opposition to the IPR negotiations.
On the whole, negotiations for the TRIPS Agreement were centered, in a large part, on the search for a consensus among the main negotiating parties whose consent was going to be required for the adoption of the agreement. A large part of the negotiations was the search for consensus positions among the main developed countries while the concessions made to developing countries were largely on the basis of the common positions adopted by the developed countries. This concentric system of consensus starting with an agreement among the most powerful players later extended to less powerful ones has justifiably been described as undemocratic within the paradigm of international negotiations.
Notes and References
3 Ministerial Declaration on the Uruguay Round, 20 September 1986, Multilateral Trade Negotiations, Doc MINDEC.
4 Concerning the role played by unilateral measures in softening the opposition of opponents to the TRIPS Agreement.