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6 Macquarie J. Bus. L. 1 (2009)

handle is hein.journals/macqjbul6 and id is 1 raw text is: MqJBL (2009) Vol 6 IMPLICATIONS OF THE TRIPS AGREEMENT IN BANGLADESH: PROSPECTS AND CONCERNS MOHAMMAD TOWHIDUL ISLAM I INTRODUCTION The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, 1994 (the TRIPs Agreement)1 creates competing interests for developed, developing and least developed countries due to its uniform and strict protection standard-setting for intellectual property rights (IPRs)2. The protection standard follows developed countries that own almost all of IPRs and collect huge revenues from IPRs.3 This developed country oriented protection standard is made obligatory for developing and least developed countries who are far behind in creating IPRs and who appropriate IPRs for their developmental needs. The stringent protectionism built in the TRIPs Agreement, although adopted in the WTO's realm of trade liberalisation, appears to re-regulate free trade through monopolisation in the way of extending the reach and length of IPRs protection, constraining the free flow of technology to developing and least developed countries, and securing rent payments for IPRs-owning developed countries.4 In * PhD Candidate, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia 1 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, 15 April 1994, Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex IC, 1869 U.N.T.S. 299; 33 LL.M. 1197 [hereinafter the TRIPs Agreement or TRIPs]. 2 It was customary to refer to industrial and intellectual property rights. The term 'industrial' was used to cover technology-based subject areas like patents, designs and trade marks. 'Intellectual property' was used to refer to copyright. The modem convention is to use 'intellectual property' to refer to both industrial and intellectual property. The TRIPs Agreement translates IPRs into trade-related intellectual property rights to commercialise the inventions and simultaneously to stop others from doing so unless rents are paid on licensing; see for details, M Rafiqul Islam, International Trade Law of the WTO (2006) 379-80. 3 It is estimated that industrialized countries hold 97 per cent of all patents, and global corporations own 90 per cent of all technology and product patents. See for details, United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2000 (2000) 84 [hereinafter UNDP]. 4 Jagdish Bhagwati, 'From Seattle to Hong Kong' (December 2005: WTO Special Edition) 84(7) Foreign Affairs 2-12. In spite of his great active role in liberalising trade under the

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