Copyright Protection before and after the Trips Agreement; Impact of the New Regime on Developing Countries

At the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1994, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was enacted to govern aspects of intellectual property in the international arena. The inclusion of the TRIPS Agreement was due to lobbying of developed countries to secure international protection of intellectual property rights given their importance to trade and development. The TRIPS Agreement is considered by some scholars to be the foundation of the international Intellectual Property Regime. Part II Section 1 of the TRIPS Agreement provides for copyright protection.This article is thus a critical analysis of whether the TRIPS Agreement introduced a new legal regime on copyright protection that subsequent agreements have built upon when compared with the preexisting international legal regimes. The discussion will then focus on some of the impacts of the new international regime on developing countries like Uganda