TRIPS Agreement and Intellectual Property Rights Protection: Some Issues

In today’s world, ideas and knowledge have become a progressively important part of world trade. A creative mind is a scarce commodity, to be found only infrequently. Inventions, innovations, high technology products and processes, and medicines have intellectual origin and high commercial value, so do works of literature and arts. Their inventors and creators deserve to be compensated for the creative value inherent in these products, processes and creations. They are the intellectual property or assets of the inventors and creators. Logically, ethically and morally, they deserve to have a right to negotiate the commercial value of their intellectual assets. In a globalizing world economy, with brisk expansion of trade, FDI and technology transfer, there was a rapid growth in the commercial exploitation of the intellectual assets. The international law in the area of IPRs, was fairly underdeveloped and was unable to serve the rapidly integrating global economy in an efficacious manner. Hence a pressing need for systematic improvement was felt by both the developing and the industrial country.