Legal Protection: TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Another important multilateral treaty concerned with intellectual property rights is the TRIPS agreement, which was devised at the inauguration of the Uruguay Round negotiations of the WTO in January 1995. It sets minimum standards for the national protection of intellectual property rights and procedures as well as remedies for their enforcement (enforcement measures include the potential for trade sanctions against non-complying WTO members). The TRIPS agreement has been widely criticized for its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection. In 1999, 44 nations considered it appropriate to treat plant varieties as intellectual property. The complete TRIPS agreement can be found on: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm1_e.htm

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Operating system An operating system is software that controls the many different operations of a computer and directs and coordinates its processing of programs. It is a remarkably complex set of instructions that schedules the series of jobs (user applications) to be performed by the computer and allocates them to the computer's various hardware systems, such as the central processing unit, main memory, and peripheral systems. The operating system directs the central processor in the loading, storage, and execution of programs and in such particular tasks as accessing files, operating software applications, controlling monitors and memory storage devices, and interpreting keyboard commands. When a computer is executing several jobs simultaneously, the operating system acts to allocate the computer's time and resources in the most efficient manner, prioritizing some jobs over others in a process called time-sharing. An operating system also governs a computer's interactions with other computers in a network.

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