During the Uruguay Trade Round, just before the creation of the WTO, a group of developed nations including the U.S, EU, and Japan made an alliance to create an international agreement on intellectual property rights. This was the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which legally protects the owner of a patent by prohibiting the replication or distribution of his or her invention without consent.

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At first, the TRIPS ideal seems a rational and accurate way to promote the empowerment of research and development on different areas, but when it comes to public health, TRIPS becomes a huge problem.

From the point of view of developing countries and Less Developed Countries (LDC), TRIPS is a serial killer. These nations urgently need access to life-saving drugs, especially to treat AIDS, but the strict nature of TRIPS, which was determined in part by the United States, where five of the worlds ten largest pharmaceutical companies are based, has led to higher drug prices across the world, inhibiting public health solutions in the developing world. This happens because a generic producer must submit a request of reproduction which can either be held up or denied, leading to a delay in competition and thus, higher costs for life saving drugs.

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On the other side, developed countries support the nature of TRIPS thanks to its capacity to protect their own companies from new competitors, the economic gain it generates helps and motivates domestic scientists to find each time newer  and newer compounds for the pharmaceutical industry.

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For this topic, we expect delegates to stick and defend their countries´ policies, but also looking for creative solutions that may help the WTO find a neutral position for both developed and developing countries in which neither developing countries’ citizens nor the developed countries’ scientists are threatened by the nature of TRIPS.