In an epochal transformation occurring within the last generation, IP rights have become binding international economic law with the passage of the Agreement on Trade-Related International Property Rights (TRIPS) as part of the WTO Agreement signed in 1994 and coming into force the following year. IP rights have been extremely controversial, especially around the issues of patenting lifeforms, the prohibitive pricing of potentially life-saving drugs in the Global South, and, less existentially, infringements on cultural and intellectual liberty represented by prohibitions on sharing, adapting, and "remixing" data of text, music, images, and code.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 164