The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Annex 1C to the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, was concluded in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994 as part of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round. Authentic texts: English, French and Spanish. It enters into force with the WTO Agreement, on 1 January 1995. Reservations, Article 72, may not be entered without the consent of the other Members. It is not the WTO Agreement itself and is not the Paris or Berne Conventions, which it incorporates by reference.

Article 1 leaves Members free to determine the method of implementing the minimum standards; they need not go further. Articles 3 and 4 impose national treatment and most-favoured-nation treatment. Part II covers, at the level of principle, copyright and related rights, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, layout-designs of integrated circuits and undisclosed information. Terms of protection, patentability tests and compulsory licences are not transcribed here as a handbook.

Part III requires civil, provisional, border and criminal enforcement procedures, without turning them into barriers to legitimate trade, as the preamble states. Part V channels disputes to the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding. The Council for TRIPS, Article 68, oversees operation. Articles 65 and 66 provide differentiated transitional periods for Members, including least-developed country Members. Article 69 requires cooperation against trade in counterfeit goods, as a principle, not as a customs playbook.

The Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health of 14 November 2001 confirms that the agreement is to be read in the light of access to medicines; it is not an amending protocol to Annex 1C. The 6 December 2005 amending protocol, on Article 31bis, entered into force later. The agreement is administered by the WTO, in a mutually supportive relationship with the World Intellectual Property Organization, without replacing it.

Cover: the signing of the Uruguay Round Final Act in Marrakesh; a period photograph, without restating the date. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: TRIPS Agreement; Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.