Being intangible, IP is existential only on account of the legal rules and laws that enforce it. Due to the unique and fragile nature of IP rights and their possible exploitation the world over, nations making progress industrially and scientifically took cognizance of the need to protect these rights by bringing about the necessary legislations in their respective countries and by international cooperation.

• The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in the year 1883 was the first international effort by 14 member states that recognized protection for patents, trademarks and industrial designs (ID).
• Following the Berne Convention in 1886 for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the International Copyright Act of 1886 was passed to facilitate the member states help their nationals with international protection of their right to control use and sale of their literary, artistic and creative works.
• In 1893, these two independent bureaus merged to form the United Nations Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI).
• Following the establishment of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, an organization known as General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) was set up in 1948 to reshape the world economy after the Second World War (1939-1942). It provides a forum to regulate tariff rates on the world scale.
• To bring more powers to GATT, the United Nations Commission on International Law (UNICITRAL) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) were set up by the UN.
• Agencies governing the Paris and Berne conventions moved form Berne to Geneva to be closer to the UN. In 1970, BIRPI became World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and in 1974, it became a specialized agency of the UN system of organizations with a mandate to administer the IP matters recognized by the member states of the UN.
• GATT was a multilateral body formed to lay down the code of conduct in the area of international trade and is a contractual agreement among the countries that provides a general framework for discipline on tariffs and non-tariff measures. Its main objective was to minimize the tariff rates and remove the impediments coming forward in the way of international trade.
• With exponential growth in world trade and rising merchandise exports, in order to ease the trade barriers among the member countries, under the auspices of GATT, series of international negotiations were held. These dealt with regulation of UN tariffs, anti-dumping, countervailing practices, geographic quotas, etc.
• Due to inability to reach an agreement, the latest round of negotiations which started in 1991, based on the Dunkel’s draft, were held between 1986 and 1994, at Uruguay. This led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• The WTO agreements, as a result of negotiations between the members, led to the establishment of a multilateral trading system encompassing trade in goods and services. There was strong lobbying on the part of US for the inclusion of IP rights in the multinational trade negotiations to stop the perceived excessive trade losses to economies of the developed world. This led to the inclusion of Trade Related Intellectual Property Subjects (TRIPS) agreement that was supposed to be aimed at protecting the IP rights, thus rewarding creativity and inventiveness.
• While India expressed fear of monopolistic powers being wielded by these economies in the name of patents, developing countries were still compelled to surrender their economies before developed countries.
• After the Uruguay round of negotiations, GATT, a non-UN organ, became WTO which was to administer TRIPS. Thus, WTO enforced TRIPS agreement as a package deal, with member countries having to accept all the agreements in toto without the option to opt out of any of the provisions without quitting WTO itself.
• India, by signing the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations, thus became a member of WTO, and TRIPS agreement was added to the agreement establishing WTO as annexure I-C. All the member countries were under obligation to implement the provisions of agreement on TRIPS. They were also obliged to bring their domestic laws in consonance with the provisions of this agreement.