WTO,IPRs and TRIPs: prospects, realities and disadvantages

WTOis a forum for negotiating agreements aimed at reducing obstacles tointernational trade and ensuring a level playing field for all, thuscontributing to economic growth and development.  It also provides a legal and institutionalframework for the implementation and monitoring of these agreements as well asfor settling disputes arising from their interpretation and application. WTOhas lots of benefits: the most significant among them are that it provides morechoice of products and qualities, raised income and stimulates economic growth.It does however beset with some misunderstanding also: the most common amongthem is that WTO destroys jobs, worsens poverty, small countries are powerlessin the WTO and WTO is the tool of powerful lobbies. WTO is composed of 16agreements, 2 decisions and 1 understanding. Most crucial of agreements are those that are related with agriculture.IPR is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of minds forwhich a set of exclusive rights are recognized in the corresponding field oflaw. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusiverights to a variety of intangible assets such as musical, literary, andartistic work, discoveries and inventions; words, phrases, symbols and even designs.Since the most significant application of IRPs is in trade hence, Trade RelatedAspects of Intellectual Property or (TRIPs) requires more attention than anyother IPR. Patent is one form of intellectual property protection that givesmonopoly right to exploit an invention for a period of 17-20 years. To bepatentable, an invention must be novel (not obvious), and inventive (not adiscovery) and be capable of industrial application. This paper will describesin details the WTO, IPR, The TRIPS, its prospects, realities, advantages anddisadvantages in easy to understand words and example for clarity of generalaudiences