World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization set up with the objective of ensuring smooth and free trade flow across nations. For this purpose, it provides a platform for negotiating agreements between the member countries. These agreements deal with agriculture, textiles and clothing, banking, telecommunications, industrial standards and product safety, food sanitation regulations and much more and are the foundation of the multilateral trading system.

One such important agreement is the 'Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)'. It for the first time brought laws relating to intellectual property into the international trading system. It was a result of the Uruguay Round of the multilateral trade negotiations. This agreement narrowed down the differences existing in the extent of protection and enforcement of the Intellectual Property rights (IPRs) around the world by bringing them under a common minimum internationally agreed trade standards. The member countries are required to abide by these standards within stipulated time-frame and promote effective protection of IPRs in order to reduce distortions and impediments to international trade. There are three obligations of member countries under TRIPS :-

• To provide minimum intellectual property rights protection through domestic laws.
  
  
• To ensure effective enforcement of these rights.
  
  
• To agree to submit disputes to the WTO Dispute Settlement System.

The TRIPS Agreement covers following categories of intellectual property:-

• Copyrights and related rights - are the rights given by the law to creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and producers of cinematograph films and sound recordings. It is a bundle of rights including, inter alia, rights of reproduction, communication to the public, adaptation and translation of the work. Copyright protection shall extend to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such. Member shall provide authors and their successors in title the right to authorize or to prohibit the commercial rental to the public of originals or copies of their copyright works. The agreement says performers must also have the right to prevent unauthorized recording, reproduction and broadcast of live performances.
  
  
• Trade Marks - Any sign, or any combination of signs, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings, shall be capable of constituting a trademark. The owner of a registered trademark shall have the exclusive right to prevent all third parties not having the owner's consent from using in the course of trade identical or similar signs for goods or services. Thus, the agreement defines the types of signs eligible for protection as trademarks and the minimum rights that must be conferred on their owners. It says that service marks must be protected in the same way as trademarks used for goods. Also, the marks that have become well-known in a particular country must enjoy additional protection.
  
  
• Geographical Indications - are the indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a member country, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin. Under the agreement, the members shall provide the legal means for interested parties to prevent:- (i) the use of any means in the designation or presentation of a good that indicates or suggests that the good in question originates in a geographical area other than the true place of origin in a manner which misleads the public as to the geographical origin of the good; (ii) any use which constitutes an act of unfair competition within the meaning of the agreement.
  
  
• Patents- are the exclusive rights granted by a country to the inventor to make, use, manufacture and market the invention that satisfies the conditions of novelty, innovativeness and usefulness. Patents shall be available for any such inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology. The members may exclude from patentability:- (i) diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals; (ii) plants and animals other than micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological processes. A patent shall confer on its owner the following exclusive rights:-
  
  
  • Where the subject matter of a patent is a product, to prevent third parties not having the owner's consent from the acts of making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing such those products;
  
  
  
  • Where the subject matter of a patent is a process, to prevent third parties not having the owner's consent from the act of using the process, and from the acts of using, offering for sale, selling, or importing for these purposes at least the product obtained directly by that process.
    
    
• Industrial Designs - refer to creative activity, which result in the ornamental or formal appearance of a product. But it does not include any mode or principle or construction or any thing which is in substance a mere mechanical device. Under the agreement, members shall provide for the protection of independently created industrial designs that are new or original. The owner of a protected industrial design shall have the right to prevent third parties not having the owner's consent from making, selling or importing articles bearing or embodying a design which is a copy, or substantially a copy, of the protected design, when such acts are undertaken for commercial purposes.
  
  
• Lay out Designs of Integrated Circuits - Under the agreement, members provide protection to the layout-designs (topographies) of integrated circuits. Members shall consider unlawful the following acts if performed without the authorization of the right holder:- importing, selling, or otherwise distributing for commercial purposes a protected layout-design, an integrated circuit in which a protected layout-design is incorporated, or an article incorporating such an integrated circuit only in so far as it continues to contain an unlawfully reproduced layout-design.


• Protection of Undisclosed Information (Trade Secrets) - A trade secret or undisclosed information is any information that has been intentionally treated as secret and is capable of commercial application with an economic interest. Natural and legal persons shall have the possibility of preventing information lawfully within their control from being disclosed to, acquired by, or used by others without their consent in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices so long as such information:-
  
  
  • Is secret in the sense that it is not, as a body or in the precise configuration and assembly of its components, generally known among or readily accessible to persons within the circles that normally deal with the kind of information in question;
    
    
  • Has commercial value because it is secret; and
  
  
  • Has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret.
    
    
• Plant varieties - Members shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective 'sui generis' system or by any combination thereof.