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IPR agreements

From the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, it was common for industrialised country governments to impose bilateral agreements specifically aimed at upgrading intellectual property rights legislation and enforcement in developing countries. Sometimes these were stand alone bilateral IPR agreements; sometimes in specific cases, like China, they were special components of bilaterally negotiated WTO accession agreements. This shows how important and specific a concern IPR was becoming. Today, however, strong IPR rules are more commonly being pursued in the context of comprehensive FTAs. (The same can be said for investment agreements. Until the late 1990s, stand alone BITs were all the rage. Since the early 2000s, they are being pursued more frequently within comprehensive FTAs.)

last update: May 2012