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a and the United States. India made pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical inventions, which were used by the United States without the authorization of the former. The matter was debated under Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO but it was concluded that “India has not complied with its obligations under… the TRIPs Agreement, because it failed to establish a mechanism that adequately preserves novelty and priority in respect of applications for product patents in respect of pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical inventions during the transitional period which it was entitled under … the Agreement, and to publish and notify adequately information about such mechanism; and that India has not complied with its obligation [under] the TRIPs Agreement, because it has failed to establish a system for the grant of exclusive marketing rights.” (WTO 1997, Report of the Panel, WTO Geneva)

The example above shows that are there is an increasing interest for technological implications of the TRIPs Agreement for developing countries. Without a properly established national law, the developing countries cannot protect their inventions from the exploitation of the developed countries. These inventions which were primarily intended to serve their public interest were eroded by the powerful industrialized nations.

Technological Gap

The technological gap between developing and developed countries is ever growing. In order to bridge the gap, developing nations ought firstly to develop well established mechanisms (as stated above) which would promote technological transfer and dissemination. Secondly, the developing countries could devise long term science and technological strategy for the development of drugs and other related products. (Juma C., 1999)

In the case of drugs that have to be made available to the developing countries, it remains that the “pharmaceutical companies that are driven by the profit motive will soon realize that the economic prospects of developing high-tech essential drugs aimed at the medical needs of the populations in developing countries are meager. As a result, they will predictably reorient at least some of their research and development efforts towards low-tech drugs. There will also predictably be an emergence of new pharmaceutical companies that have as their only focus the development of low-tech essential drugs that address the medical needs of the populations of developing countries.” (Jorn Sonderholm, 2010)

However the issue remains that nations with weak IPR protection stand to realize an instant benefit to lower-priced goods or technologies. Cheaper DVDs, access to AIDS drugs, or other types of imitation can represent increases in consumer welfare when compared to the higher prices that would prevail with stronger IPR protection.

Plant Variety Protection (PVP)

Intellectual property right was only concerned at the local level before the WTO’s Uruguay Round. With the advent of the TRIPs Agreement under the WTO, all its members had to compulsorily provide internationally acceptable and enforceable patent protection for new inventions in all areas of technology. Plant varieties and seeds protection was amongst the issues for which developing countries had to extend its intellectual property. This undoubted had consequences on the global agriculture.

The introduction and full implementation of the TRI