A second lever is the exemption from patent rights. Intellectual property based on non-competing materials is generally allowed to give consumers and other producers, beyond the owners (i.e. “third parties”), more rights to the exploitation of private knowledge than in the case of ordinary property. Patent systems will always have provisions defining and delimiting these rights. Some of these are defined as automatic exceptions that do not depend on the authorization of the rights holder or the state, such as the use .B of research products or the preparation of products for marketing after the patent expires. Other exceptions, which are not automatic, require the state to allow private or public actors to use patented knowledge without the owner`s consent, as is the case with a compulsory licence. Although drugs are the area in which we observe most mandatory licensing measures, as Ramani and Urias discussed in this IS, other sectors in which these exceptions play an important role are semiconductors (chip manufacturers have to experiment with different chips, Many post-communist countries have finally joined the European Union and contributed to their expansion from 15 at the time of the creation of the WTO to 28 until the mid-2000s (and 27 after the uk`s withdrawal in 2020). It is important to note that the WTO was concluded as a “single undertaking,” which means that all members have been subject to all their agreements. As a result, even the countries that opposed the TRIPS found themselves as parties – and attached to it. Thus, after the end of the Uruguay Round and the entry into force of the new WTO rules in 1995, countries began to revise their national legislation to comply with the TRIPS agreement (and other WTO agreements). In other words, WTO member states have spent a period of negotiations on TRIPS to implement the TRIPS Trip Treaty (Shadlen, 2017); Deere, 2008).
In this context, given that participation in the international trading system depends on compliance with the TRIPS agreement, the question for countries was not whether, but how, they would comply with the new international agreement. Shadlen, K.C. 2011. The political contradictions of incremental innovation: lessons learned from the review of pharmaceutical patents in Brazil. Politics – Society, 39 (2): 143-174. Gamso, J., Big, R. 2020. Trade agreements, foreign direct investment and the moderating role of property rights. Journal of International Business Policy, Pre-published online: doi.org/10.1057/s42214-020-00061-x. This dynamic has been remarkable, for example, in the area of drug intellectual property. Many developing countries have tried to block the inclusion of intellectual property on the Uruguay Round agenda by saying that IP and trade rules should be maintained separately and, after failing to remove intellectual protection from the agenda, they mobilized their efforts to oppose the inclusion of the provision that would require countries to allow patents on medicines.