Uruguay round

The Uruguay Round was the 8th round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) conducted within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spanning from 1986 to 1994 and embracing 123 countries as “contracting parties”. The negotiations and process ended with the signing of the Final Act of the Marrakesh Agreement in April 1994 at Marrakesh, Morocco. The round led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), with GATT remaining as an integral part of the WTO agreements. The Uruguay Round was, without a doubt, the largest trade negotiation ever, and may very well have been the largest negotiation ever. It set out rules and principles to cover all global trade, from banking to consumer products. The subjects for negotiations, the widest of any GATT round, were tariffs, non-tariff measures, tropical products as a priority area, natural resource-based products, textiles and clothing, agriculture, review of GATT articles, safeguards, Tokyo Round agreements ad arrangements, subsidies and countervailing measures, dispute settlement, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures and the Functioning of the GATT System (FOGS).

Uruguay Round Negotiations in 1995 and the resultant World Trade Organization (WTO) that called for international trade between nations on equal footings introduced many changes. Trade related to goods, services, people (immigrant skilled labour) and capital was to be made more ‘impartial’ so that there is gradual reduction in the treatment for these factors of trade arising from the host nation and from the imported country. Still there is lot of hiccups as far as a mutual consensus is to be developed among various nations.

As far as trips is concerned there are conflicting views for it among the developing and the developed nations. The IPR regime that had to be followed uniformly could not happen and there is country specific intellectual property definition particularly in the new emerging fields of medicine, Pharma, nano technology, environmental science, microbiology etc.

The emerging economies are not ready to comply by the ‘liberal’ definition of intellectual property that they were forced to comply in the other WTO negotiations at Geneva, Singapore and Seattle when the emerging economies were not that organized like they have formed unions like brics, ibsa etc.

So, these developing nations were easily pressurized to comply by whatever demands that was put forward by the developed nations at the negotiating table. The ‘liberal’ definition of intellectual property makes the well-established mncs from the western economies that are on the throes of technical expertise, patent even the naturally evolved things like a particular phenotype-expressing gene-like or any microorganism.

Adding to this is the unresolved ‘ever greening’ clause in the ipr draft bill that tends to make their exclusive marketing rights of any product perennial. This step particularly harms the terminally ill patients like aids patient who needs cheaper version i.e., generic version of anti-retro viral drugs that mostly are invented by the rich MNCS who have a lot of corporate and federal funding for newer inventions. Moreover, this has steepened the trade conflicts between nations divided among the developing Southern nations and the developed Northern nations.

India being a signatory to world intellectual property organization convention is pledged to gradually move towards a ‘product patent’ regime from the present ‘process patent’. It has initiated this process from 2000 itself. Moreover, India is also making its own patents globally registered so it can reduce incidents like that of basmati and turmeric.

Also an autonomous body under Sam Pitroda has been established namely national knowledge commission that caters to compiling all inventions and traditional knowledge that India has. This will reduce instances like plagiarism for economic gains by the rich nations having financial muscle to fight protracted legal wars.

India is also improving upon its regulatory framework as far as piracy is concerned by bringing in constructive amendments in its Copyright Act of 1958.

Since the coming days there will be nation’s war for intellectual property as its provides for massive economic gains so it is better that India takes these pro-active steps so that it do not provide predators to take on all that had been in practice in India since time immemorial. Also, with realignment in its laws with the international regime it tends to make itself a safe ground for international products which fears their revenue loss from plagiarism.

The main achievements of the Uruguay Round included:

1. A trade-weighted average tariff cut of 38%;
2. Conclusion of the Agreement on Agriculture which brought agricultural trade for the first time under full GATT disciplines;
3. Adoption of the General Agreement of trade in Services (GATS);
4. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS);
5. The Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS);
6. The creation of unified and predictable dispute settlement mechanism (Dispute Settlement Body-DSB);
7. Confirmation f the trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM);
8. The establishment of the WTO, which administers 15 multilateral, and four plurilateral trade agreements;

The Uruguay Round had extended considerably the realm of world trade rules with agreements on intellectual property and trade in services in ex-change for finally tackling agricultural protectionism on a broader scale and getting rid of the textile and clothing quotas.