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Blakeney, Michael --- "A Critical Analysis of the TRIPS Agreement" [2006] ELECD 321; in Pugatch, Perez Meir (ed), "The Intellectual Property Debate" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: The Intellectual Property Debate

Editor(s): Pugatch, Perez Meir

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420383

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: A Critical Analysis of the TRIPS Agreement

Author(s): Blakeney, Michael

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

1. A critical analysis of the TRIPS
agreement
Michael Blakeney

1. INTRODUCTION

Signature of the TRIPS agreement is one of the obligations which members
of the WTO are obliged to undertake. The ostensible reason why this agree-
ment was included in the constellation of undertakings which comprise the
charter of a global free trade regime is that the infringement of intellectual
property rights is claimed to be trade distorting. Intellectual property was
included as a negotiating subject in the Uruguay Round of the GATT,
largely on the evidence which was compiled by the USA that annual losses
to US traders caused by the trade in infringing items totalled some $US60
billion, which represented an annual loss of some 200 000 jobs.1 These
figures appear to have been compiled from evidence presented to Congres-
sional hearings about the losses sustained by businesses from counterfeit-
ing and piracy. There is an understandable tendency for traders to
exaggerate the sales which they might have made if not for the presence of
factors over which they have no control.
Similarly large figures have been reported in Europe. For example, in its
proposal for a counterfeiting Directive, the European Commission refers to
a survey carried out in France in 1998 by KPMG, Sofres and the Union des
Fabricants, which reported that the average loss to the businesses that
replied to the survey was put at 6.4 per cent of turnover. It also refers to a
2000 study by the Centre for Economics and ...