This handbook describes the historical and legal background to the TRIPS Agreement, its role in the WTO and its institutional framework. It reviews the following areas: general provisions and basic principles; copyright and related rights; trademarks; geographical indications; patents; industrial designs, layout-designs, undisclosed information and anti-competitive practices; enforcement of IPRs; dispute settlement in the context of the TRIPS Agreement; TRIPS and public health; and current TRIPS issues. It contains a guide to TRIPS notifications by WTO members and describes how to access the official documentation relating to the TRIPS Agreement and related issues. Furthermore, it includes the legal texts of the TRIPS Agreement and the relevant provisions of the WIPO conventions referred to in it, as well as subsequent relevant WTO instruments and related non-WTO treaties. The new edition covers the public health revision of the Agreement that entered into force in 2017 and provides updates on other recent developments.

Non-technical explanation of each section of the TRIPS Agreement, as well as later instruments and current policy issues, provides the reader with a clear understanding of the key provisions, their background and relevant developments

Detailed analysis of and commentary on the later instruments pertaining to public health that were adopted in the WTO ensures that the reader is aware of the main changes that took place post-1995 in the context of public health

Provides an overview of the institutional framework within the WTO that administers the TRIPS Agreement and describes some of the experience in analysing and interpreting it in the context of the WTO dispute settlement system, thereby enabling the reader to understand the TRIPS Agreement as part of the broader WTO trading regime and its institutional framework