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Simple English definitions for legal terms
Uruguay Round
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A quick definition of Uruguay Round:
The Uruguay Round was a negotiation that happened in 1994 between many countries. They talked about trade and made some new rules. One of the new rules was called the TRIPs Agreement. This rule made it so that countries had to protect the ideas and inventions of people from other countries. It also made it easier to solve problems if there was a disagreement about trade. Many countries agreed to follow this rule. In the United States, they changed some of their own rules about patents to follow the TRIPs Agreement.
A more thorough explanation:
The Uruguay Round refers to the negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1994. These negotiations resulted in the TRIPs Agreement, which established the World Trade Organization and made member nations' patent laws more uniform.
The TRIPs Agreement is a treaty that harmonized and strengthened the intellectual-property laws of its signatories by linking the obligation to protect the intellectual-property rights of other members' citizens with a mechanism for settling international trade disputes. It standardized patentable subject matter to include medicines, required testing for nonobviousness and utility, protected patentees from infringing imports, and all but eliminated compulsory licenses.
For example, Congress changed patent terms to 20 years from the date of application, rather than 17 years from the date of issue, widened the definition of infringement to cover offering for sale and importing, and permitted provisional applications, with brief descriptions and no claims, to establish priority.
More than 130 nations are parties to the TRIPs Agreement. Articles 1–8 of TRIPs include the basic principles of national treatment and most-favoured-nation treatment. That is, each Member must give to the nationals of other Members treatment no less favourable than that given to its own nationals, and must give to the nationals of all Members the same privileges as are given to the nationals of any Member. Thus, subject to certain exemptions, bilateral agreements between Members should no longer be permitted.