TRIPS Agreement

IP

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights — WTO agreement setting minimum IP protection standards.

Sources

1. World Trade Organization — TRIPS: a more detailed overview of the TRIPS Agreement wto.org accessed 23 September 2026

The WTO’s own overview dates it precisely and claims a lot for it: the TRIPS Agreement “came into effect on 1 January 1995” and “is to date the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property”. Its breadth is the thing to take away, because people reach for TRIPS as though it were a patent treaty and it is much wider than that. The areas it covers are “copyright and related rights (i.e. the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasting organizations); trademarks including service marks; geographical indications including appellations of origin; industrial designs; patents including the protection of new varieties of plants; the layout-designs of integrated circuits; and undisclosed information”. Geographical indications and plant varieties sitting inside the same instrument as copyright is what makes TRIPS the reference point for so many unrelated trade disputes.

A topic page, not the treaty. The WTO’s topic pages are the organisation’s own plain-language account of what its agreements do, so they are authoritative for the shape of the regime. They are not the operative text. Where an obligation or a remedy is at stake, the agreement itself governs, and that is what a panel would read.

Related terms

• Compulsory Licensing
• Copyright
• Data Exclusivity
• EUIPO
• European Patent Office
• Patent

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).