Centre and Periphery in the WTO: The Case of TRIPS

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a trade regime that could be seen as one of the driving forces behind globalization of trade. The WTO is also one of the most efficient regulators of international trade. It therefore represents both a catalyst of, and a limitation on international trade. Since the Uruguay Round the WTO has become increasingly important for member states and their industry, as it has expanded to new areas such as intellectual property, services and even some investment. The WTO is the host of 1481 vastly diverse member states. The multilateral principle of the WTO has, however, on many occasions been challenged by the unilateral actions of the US and the EU.2 Rugman (2001) claims that these two actors are situated, so to speak, at the power-centre of the WTO because of the vast size of their domestic economies and the absence of effective regional groups in the rest of the world. However, the expectation was that the creation of the WTO dispute settlement procedures in 19943 would provide peripheral as well as central member states and their companies with greater incentive to bring cases to the WTO (Croome, 1999; Schott and Buurman, 1994; Whalley, 1996). The question is therefore: who benefits more from the WTO system: companies from central, or companies from peripheral WTO member states?4