TRIPS made intellectual property binding international economic law in the mid-1990s.

Evidence

In an epochal transformation occurring within the last generation, IP rights have become binding international economic law with the passage of the Agreement on Trade-Related International Property Rights (TRIPS) as part of the WTO Agreement signed in 1994 and coming into force the following year. IP rights have been extremely controversial, especially around the issues of patenting lifeforms, the prohibitive pricing of potentially life-saving drugs in the Global South, and, less existentially, infringements on cultural and intellectual liberty represented by prohibitions on sharing, adapting, and “remixing” data of text, music, images, and code. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 164

Categorization

• XREF: TRIPS as a concrete landmark in the global neoliberal institutional order — ties to Slobodian’s work on globalist architecture and the WTO. — connects to: IP rights moved from periphery to center of world economy conflicts since the 1980s — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 163; Transnational corporations captured IP policy and pushed TRIPS through GATT — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 2194; The 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement made intellectual property binding global law — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 164

Broader Connections

• Transnational corporations captured IP policy and pushed TRIPS through GATT #expands (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 2194