After establishing a series of agreements regarding Uruguay Round in 1995 and with the starting of activities of the World Trade Organization (WTO) the agreement on the intellectual property rights (TRIPS) comes into force modifying most of the current regulation on the protection of innovations, particularly of medicines and biotechnologies. The promoters of these modifications were confident that, in this way, it would be possible to hasten the innovative process, guaranteeing a fair compensation for the new products. These changes can have important consequences in the future of the agricultural sector since probably a reduced number of companies will totally control the seeds of different sectors. Also, the appearance of new entities in certain areas can have negative effects on their biodiversity and on the endemic species. Basically, this paper consists of two parts: first, a historical and judicial revision of the protection of intellectual property rights and second, a special technical and political-economic emphasis on the protection of this type of rights in relation to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

  World Trade Organization Regulation on Intellectual Property Rights of the “Bio-Technology” (670.1 KiB, 3,626 hits)