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eement minimum standards are set for copyright, trademarks and patents.

For what concern copyright protection TRIPs agreement expands the standards set in Berne Convention to all WTO’s members, setting the duration of copyright’s protection to the author’s life plus 50 years; and more important it extends the copyright protection to audio recordings and to computer programs, which are now considered as literary works.

Table 1 - Substantive requirements of the TRIPs agreement in the WTO, from Maskus (2000)

The main changes in trademarks policy concern the strengthening on protection of well known trademarks, in order to avoid the fraudulent use of confusing marks similar to the famous ones. Some protection has been granted also to wine and spirits denomination on a geographical basis.

With regard to patent protection the most important change was its extension to all technological field, which means that especially countries that based their technological progress on imitation of foreign inventions, have now to grant the possibility to apply for a patent for these innovations, even if they belong to field before unprotected like pharmaceutical, chemical or food industry. A special case is represented by biotechnology, which now have IPRs protection, but with some exceptions for animals and plants developed by traditional methods.

Furthermore the length of patent protection has been extended to 20 years since the filing date in all the countries.

Another important innovation sets by TRIPs agreement is the protection of trade secrets.

The third part of the TRIPs agreement sets the standard for the enforcement procedures all the members have to follow in order to ensure that every infringement of IPRs will be punished. The agreement specifies how these enforcement procedures should be handled, how to collect evidences, and which provisional measures, injunctions and penalties should be granted.

This agreement take into account the difference between countries and set a transitional period for the developing countries: while the developed countries have to complies the obligations by 1st January 1996, the deadline was delayed of 4 years for developing countries, and of 10 years for least-developed countries.

Moreover developed countries should promoting technology transfer to least-developed countries, to facilitate the advancement of their level of technology, in order to make them in condition to exploit the benefits set by the agreement.

ISSUES CONCERNING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TRIPs AGREEMENT

In the long run the effect of TRIPs agreement on IPRs protection systems is supposed to bring benefits to all countries, since it will be more profitable to invest in R&D projects, increasing the technology level and thus the incomes of every country.

The problem is that, to satisfy all the agreement’s requirements, many countries, especially the developing ones, will have to sustain high costs to adequate their laws and institutions in order to meet the required standards of protection and of enforcement of IPRs. Furthermore many of them have also to sustain the cost of granting patents to foreign countries for products that before were unprotected and freely imitated.

We bring an example of these costs presenting the case of the pharmaceutical industry