TRIPS: The Post-Doha Divide - Issues for LDCs

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TRIPS: The Post-Doha Divide - Issues for LDCs

By Asaf Shamsi, B. Pharm., MBA

Director,

International Operations

TRIPs, the intellectual property component of the Uruguay

round GATT Treaty, gave rise to an acrimonious debate between the developed

countries and less developed countries (LDCs). On one side, business interests

in the developed world claimed large losses from the imitation and use of their

innovations in LDCs. They also asserted that establishing strong intellectual

property rights would actually benefit the developing countries by encouraging

foreign investment, the transfer of technology and greater domestic research

and development (R&D). On the other side, LDC governments adamantly opposed

this view, worrying about the higher prices that stronger intellectual property

rights would entail and about the harm that their introduction might cause to

infant high tech industries.

No country was more actively involved in opposing this

component of the GATT...

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