WTO Dispute Settlement Related to TRIPS Agreement: Problems and Suggestions for Improvement

TRIPS Agreement plays an important and sensitive role in WTO system. Compared with agreements regulating trade in goods and trade in services, it has some special features. It was concluded from long period intensive debates and ‘great package deal’ compromises between the North and South on Uruguay Round negotiations. However, the past cases and experiences did not follow what the negotiators anticipated. Although the mandates of Doha Round negotiations involved several topics and achieved progresses successfully, some fundamental loopholes and deficiencies under TRIPS Agreement were not touched. These problems include the correlations between TRIPS Agreement and WIPO-administrated Conventions, exhaustion issues of IPRs, monitoring function of TRIPS Council, exception provisions in Part II, last sentence of Article 8 (1), non-violation or situation complaint, and technology transfer. The author will discuss each problem individually and try to provide improvement suggestions correspondingly.