FTAs Knitting a Web of Higher Intellectual Property Standards Globally?

Intellectual property chapters having TRIPS-plus provisions seem to have now become an unavoidable feature of every free trade agreement being signed across the world. TRIPS-plus provisions such as data exclusivity, patent term extensions, patent linkage, prohibitions of parallel importation, highly restrictive conditions for issuing compulsory licences, and expanded subject-matter requirements are becoming part of the domestic laws of countries across the world through the path cleared by these FTAs. It seems that a bilateral forum of negotiation is now being preferred over a multilateral forum by many of the developed countries because of the greater bargaining power the former grants to them. TRIPS standards have been put into place after taking into consideration the needs of all the member countries of WTO. These bilateral forums are tending to create a system parallel to and higher than the intellectual property protection standards laid down by TRIPS owing to the absence of an MFN exception clause under TRIPS