WORK
TRIPS Agreement
The 1994 WTO agreement that imposed American-style intellectual property protections on every member state — drafted largely by US pharmaceutical, software, and entertainment companies, and the canonical example of how the rules of the global trading system are written by the powerful for the powerful.
The
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), concluded in 1994 as part of the Uruguay Round and administered by the WTO, imposed comprehensive intellectual property protections on every WTO member state. The agreement requires patent protection for at least twenty years, copyright protection for at least fifty years after the author's death, and trademark protection of indefinite duration. It was drafted largely by a coalition of American pharmaceutical, software, and entertainment companies operating through the Intellectual Property Committee, and was adopted over the objections of developing nations that correctly predicted it would raise the cost of medicines, restrict technology transfer, and constrain their policy space for decades.
Chang treats TRIPS as the most consequential and damaging single instrument in the contemporary architecture of ladder-kicking — a regime that imposes on every developing nation IP protections that the United States itself did not adopt until late in its own