Symposium on TRIPs and TRIMs in the Uruguay Round: Analytical and Negotiating Issues Introduction and Overview

HE Uruguay Round negotiations included three ‘new’ agenda items trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs); trade-related investment measures (TRIMs); and services that had not been covered explicitly in previous GATT negotiations. While services issues have attracted a good deal of analytical attention, this is much less the case for TRIPs and TRIMs. In an effort to further the understanding of TRIPs and TRIMs, a study group was organised in 1988 to address the important issues. This effort was supported in part by grants from the Canadian Donner Foundation to the Centre for the Study of International Economic Relations of the University of Western Ontario and the Ford Foundation to the Institute of Public Policy Studies of the University of Michigan. Besides myself, the original members of the study group included Alan V. Deardorff (University of Michigan), Keith E. Maskus (University of Colorado), Rachel McCulloch (Brandeis University), and Deborah Hurley (OECD Secretariat). The members of the study group had the benefit of discussing their work in progress at a one-day meeting convened in Washington, D.C. in April 1989. This meeting included several staff economists from US Government agencies and the World Bank as well as some economists from universities in the Washington area and from the Institute for International Economics. Many useful comments were obtained from those present. We had planned originally to publish the study group papers in book form, but changes in commitments of some of those involved made this infeasible. It was decided accordingly to publish four of the study group papers as a symposium in