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] The general objectives of these agreements are: the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an agreement of international law between all Member States of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It sets minimum standards for the regulation of different forms of intellectual property by national governments, as is the case for nationals of other WTO member states. [3] The TRIPS agreement was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) between 1989 and 1990[4] and is managed by the WTO. The ON TRIPS agreement is a minimum model agreement that allows members to more broadly protect intellectual property protection on demand. Members are free to determine the appropriate method of transposing the provisions of the agreement into their own legal and practical order. Since the TRIPS agreement came into force, it has been criticized by developing countries, scientists and non-governmental organizations. While some of this criticism is generally opposed to the WTO, many proponents of trade liberalization also view TRIPS policy as a bad policy. The effects of the concentration of WEALTH of TRIPS (money from people in developing countries for copyright and patent holders in industrialized countries) and the imposition of artificial shortages on citizens of countries that would otherwise have had weaker intellectual property laws are common bases for such criticisms.

Other critics have focused on the inability of trips trips to accelerate the flow of investment and technology to low-income countries, a benefit that WTO members achieved prior to the creation of the agreement. The World Bank`s statements indicate that TRIPS have clearly not accelerated investment in low-income countries, whereas they may have done so for middle-income countries. [33] As part of TRIPS, long periods of patent validity were examined to determine the excessive slowdown in generic drug entry and competition. In particular, the illegality of preclinical testing or the presentation of samples to be authorized until a patent expires have been accused of encouraging the growth of certain multinationals and not producers in developing countries. The actual copyright and patent standards of the TRIPS agreement come largely from other sources. As far as copyright is concerned, the Berne Convention is the source of most OF the TRIPS provisions. The main areas in which TRIPS expands Bernese copyright provisions are the explicit protection of software and databases. Similarly, the Paris Convention provides the source of patent adhesive provisions, to which TRIPS mainly add rules of application. The Berne and Paris Conventions are managed by WIPO.