Uruguay Round

…the early phases of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations. The group takes its name from the city of its founding in northeastern Australia and reflects Australia’s prominent role in bringing the group into existence.

Negotiated as part of the Uruguay Round (1986–94) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the TRIPS Agreement obligates members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish and enforce minimum levels of copyright, patent, and trademark protection within their jurisdictions. Countries that fail to do so are…

The Uruguay Round negotiated the most ambitious set of trade-liberalization agreements in GATT’s history. The worldwide trade treaty adopted at the round’s end slashed tariffs on industrial goods by an average of 40 percent, reduced agricultural subsidies, and included groundbreaking new agreements on trade in services.…

The Uruguay Round led to the replacement of GATT by the WTO in 1995. Whereas GATT focused almost exclusively on goods (though much of agriculture and textiles were excluded), the WTO encompassed all goods, services, and intellectual property, as well as some investment policies. The combined…

…and clarifications negotiated during the Uruguay Round (referred to as “Understandings”) plus a dozen other multilateral agreements on merchandise trade. GATT 1994 became an integral part of the agreement that established the WTO. Other core components include the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which attempted to supervise and…

…negotiated as part of the Uruguay Round (1986–94) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The TRIPS Agreement requires all member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to extend patent protection to “any inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new,…