T rips and the Sufficiency of the Free Trade Principles

The technological revolution was central to the apotheosis of trade and intellectual property. As new technologes became vital to production, powerful proprietary interests pursued the global protection of intellectual property. Intellectual property became a trade issue.1 In the merger of trade and intellectual property law under the World Trade Organization (WTO), the free trade principles of most-favoured-nation (MFN) and national treatment inform the resulting Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Fbghts (TRIPs).~ While the national treatment principle prohbits internal trade discrimination, the principle of MFN treatment aims to ensure that any advantage extended to one Member State is equally extended to all other Member States. In their operation, therefore, the free trade principles are basic disciplines, intended to provide a substructure for the transformation of conflict into a mutually beneficial social order. The Great Depression of the 1930s and World War 11 provided the philosophical impetus for the multilateral embodiment of the fiee trade principles under the Havana Charter of the International Trade Organization ([TO). The protectionist measures of the inter-war period, in the form of excessive tariffs and preferential tariff schemes? were linked with social unrest, political extremism and war. Protectionism was perceived as the antithesis of free trade and peace. Liberal trade and freedom for commercial transactions were seen as the best way to promote the public welfare, based