In 1996, the APEC Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) established an Intellectual Property Rights Get-Together (IPR-GT). The aim was to ensure adequate and effective protection, through legislative, administrative and enforcement mechanisms, of intellectual property rights in the Asia-Pacific region based on the principles of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and other related agreements. In 1997, the CTI made the IPR-GT an official APEC group with explicit terms of reference, and renamed it the Intellectual Property Rights Experts Group (IPEG).