Social problems and their societal impacts

Press Release: International Copyright as a Social Issue

For Immediate Release: Intellectual Property Issues Debated On Global Scale Press Release, Socially Conscious Global Economic Groups are protesting international intellectual property laws that they say are burdensome to developing economies. They cite the WHO and the TRIPS agreement as fundamentally flawed.

Groups are concerning with the issue of protecting such commercial properties as those which might be defined as 'intellectual' in nature. Intellectual property is that property which, though represented in terms of words, images, ideas or designs, can nonetheless be demonstrated to have quantifiable and qualified economic value. This is a core social issue relating directly the philosophical orientation of different social contexts, with capitalist nations such as the United States taking a highly stringent position on the subject and with more socialist oriented nations such as China taking a fundamentally non-proprietary approach. Thus, with the growth of international trade, this issue has prompted widespread disagreement and sweeping legislation designed to resolve these differences. As the legislation currently in place clearly favors the ideals of proprietary economies, it represents a core social conflict with widespread implications. (Chengsi, 1)

The analysis of the legal implications of the conditions established by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) contained here, with a specific focus directed toward understanding the ways in which its policies differ both from former internationally governing agreements or conventions on the subject of intellectual property rights and from currently existent or currently subsiding domestic policies on the subject of intellectual property rights. The core of the focus in this discussion is on the relevance of patent laws.

Though nations such as the U.S., leading exporters of patented properties and products, would promote the idea and the parameters of an international standard on the subjects of intellectual property and patent-holding, it would not be until the establishment of the WTO that any real global mandate could exist for contending with the subject. The WTO, through its primary role as a mediator, negotiator, and monitor of international trade policies and disputes, serves by design as a gatekeeper of international trade, offering the structural conditions and assembled authority to exact a legitimate level of authority over its member nations. This accounts for the appropriation of many of the conditions resulting from previous global conventions relating to intellectual property for use in the TRIPS legislation, with its reinforcement under the parameters of the new WTO denoting an intellectual property structure with theretofore unprecedented regulatory relevance. (Chadha, 1)

In considering the content of the TRIPS agreement in light of its legal implications, the function of the WTO comes into more vivid focus. Indeed, we can see through its approach to intellectual property and patent protections, which its legislative and philosophical thrust tends to endorse as a mode to sustainable global development, that the WTO is designed to reduce the impact of tariffs, diplomatic trade obstructions and basic social/legal/political differences in the interests creating globally viable standards in all categories of commerce. According to this exact premise, the TRIPS agreement functions to serve this interest in the categories of intellectual property and patenting.