Trips-plus conditions, which impose standards beyond TRIPS, have also been verified. [38] These free trade agreements contain conditions that limit the ability of governments to introduce competition for generic drug manufacturers. In particular, the United States has been criticized for promoting protection far beyond the standards prescribed by the TRIPS. The U.S. free trade agreements with Australia, Morocco and Bahrain have expanded patentability by making patents available for new uses of known products. [39] The TRIPS agreement authorizes the granting of compulsory licences at the discretion of a country. The terms of trips plus in the U.S. Free Trade Agreement with Australia, Jordan, Singapore and Vietnam have limited the application of mandatory licences to emergencies, remedies for cartels and abuse of dominance, and cases of non-commercial public use. [39] The TRIPS agreement introduced intellectual property rights into the multilateral trading system for the first time and remains the largest multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date. In 2001, developing countries, fearing that developed countries had insisted on too narrow a reading of the TRIPS trip, launched a series of discussions that culminated in the Doha Declaration. The Doha Declaration is a WTO DECLARATION that clarifies the scope of the TRIPS agreement, which states, for example, that TRIPS can and should be interpreted in light of the objective of “promoting access to medicines for all”. In addition to the basic intellectual property standards set out in the TRIPS agreement, many nations have committed to bilateral agreements to adopt a higher level of protection.

This collection of standards, known as TRIPS or TRIPS-Plus, can take many forms. [20] One of the general objectives of these agreements is that, unlike other IP agreements, TRIPS have an effective enforcement mechanism. States can be disciplined by the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. The 2002 Doha Declaration confirmed that the TRIPS agreement should not prevent members from taking the necessary steps to protect public health. Despite this recognition, less developed countries have argued that flexible TRIPS provisions, such as mandatory licensing, are almost impossible to obtain. The least developed countries, in particular, have made their young domestic manufacturing and technological industries proof of the infallible policy. Ministerial Statement on the TRIPS and Public Health Agreement, adopted on 14 November 2001 (Doha Declaration) The summarised part of the agreement has two main objectives: during the multilateral negotiations of the Uruguay Round (1986-1994) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the EU signed an agreement on the trade aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS). Pharmaceutical patents are part of the intellectual property rights that the agreement seeks to protect.