GATT as relation to patents:
garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/.trade/.GATT/.GATT.html
ladas.com
trading.wmw.com
stanford.edu
haledorr.com
snip:
Intellectual Property Protection
"The 'Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights' ('TRIPs') commits each of the WTO member countries to provide basic levels of patent, trademark, and copyright protection to a WTO country's nationals."
For many industries, such as software, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and entertainment, the value of their products or services lies in intellectual property rights ("IPR"). The piracy of these rights in countries that do not offer adequate IPR protection has become a major problem for these industries, costing them billions of dollars a year. Consequently, an important negotiating objective of the Uruguay Round was to seek the enactment and effective enforcement by foreign countries of laws that recognize and protect intellectual property. The resulting Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (commonly called "TRIPs") goes a long way towards realizing this objective. TRIPs commits each of the WTO member countries to provide basic levels of patent, trademark, and copyright protection to a WTO country's nationals. WTO countries are those that have joined the World Trade Organization and include most developed and developing countries where substantial commerce occurs (with the exception of Russia and China). In addition, under TRIPs, the IPR protection that is provided to one WTO country must be provided to all member countries.
Patents must now be protected for a period of at least 20 years, measured from the filing date of the patent application, and U.S. law has been amended to incorporate this change, effective for applications filed on or after June 8, 1995. See footnote 2. Patents must be made available for inventions in all fields of technology, including pharmaceuticals, micro-organisms, and non-biological and microbiological processes, but not to plants and animals generally. Member countries are also allowed to decline protection for diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals. Effective January 1, 1996, TRIPs also requires broadening the definition of infringing activity under U.S. law to include offering for sale or importing a product covered by a U.S. patent (in addition to the current right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the product). Finally, for patent applications filed after January 1, 1996, the scope of "inventive activity" for priority purposes is broadened to extend to such activity in any WTO country, rather than just the NAFTA countries. See footnote 3.
TRIPs allows governments to continue to engage in compulsory licensing, an issue that has been of great concern to a number of industries. See footnote 4. The semiconductor industry, however, was able to limit compulsory licensing to public non-commercial use or for remedying anticompetitive practices.
In copyright, protection should now be afforded throughout the world for computer software and data bases, as well as for sound recordings, performances and broadcasts. TRIPs provides that the minimum term of copyright protection in most instances is to be 50 years, and protects broadcasts for 20 years. TRIPs also requires that rental rights must now be provided for at least computer programs and cinematographic works, and required changes to U.S. law to create new federal civil and criminal remedies against "bootlegging." U.S. law was also amended to provide, subject to certain conditions, for the restoration of protection for virtually all copyrighted works, including sound recordings, from WTO or Berne Union countries not in the public domain abroad, but not protected under U.S. law.
TRIPs further requires that trademarks be protected for a minimum of seven years and be indefinitely renewable, and that trademark protection under the Paris Convention now be extended to service marks.
An additional intellectual property issue covered by the GATT legislation involves a procedure for dealing with imports that infringe U.S. intellectual property rights, the so-called "Section 337" action. Section 337 is a law that allows the International Trade Commission ("ITC") to exclude goods from the United States and enjoin activities regarding imports that violate U.S. IPR, i.e., patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. Under this provision, U.S. parties may file a complaint with the ITC to prevent the importation of "unfairly traded" merchandise. Section 337 survived a GATT challenge to certain provisions considered discriminatory to foreign companies, and the revisions to Section 337 in the GATT legislation endeavor to make Section 337 procedures more compatible with intellectual property litigation in U.S. district courts. This important remedy against infringing imports remains available to U.S. companies.
Finally, of concern to exporters will be the new provisions for "border measures." TRIPs allows countries to establish procedures whereby trademark, patent, and copyright owners can obtain seizures of infringing, counterfeit or pirated goods at the border, subject to certain safeguards. It remains to be seen how such procedures will be administered, but exporters should be aware of the danger of such possible seizures under the new procedures. |
