Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights: A Concise Guide to the TRIPS Agreement (original) (raw)
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Will the TRIPS Agreement Foster Appropriate Biotechnologies for Developing Countries?
Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2007
While almost all of the investment in agricultural biotechnology to date has been in temperate crops suitable for developed countries, developing countries are the greatest potential beneficiaries of this major technological advance. To realise this potential requires investment in crops appropriate to climatic and agronomic conditions in developing countries. Protection of intellectual property rights is a necessary condition for the private sector to invest in appropriate biotechnologies. This paper develops a game theoretic model of a bioscience firm that adapts a new technology to a range of agronomic conditions in response to the enforcement of intellectual property rights in a developed and a developing country. Over a range of potential penalties, low levels of enforcement by the developing country remain endemic despite the desire to have the bioscience firm adapt the biotechnology to its local conditions. In particular, the trade penalties contained in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights are likely to be ineffective. The developing country might increase enforcement if the developed country was more aggressive in liberalising agriculture trade because there would be greater symmetry in the benefits of the technology. for correspondence. Thanks are due to two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments on earlier drafts.
The TRIPS Agreement and intellectual property in health and agriculture
This chapter sets out the provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as related to intellectual property in health and agriculture and the policy work done in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first part focuses on matters re-1. INTRODuCTION This chapter describes provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Information & Communications Technology Law, 2015
The entry of the TRIPS Agreement has seen the developing countries and the least developed countries (LDCs) suffer from the excessive burden of obligations imposed under the Agreement to embrace and implement a higher standard of intellectual property protection. One of the areas where the impact of the measures are most felt is on accessibility to affordable medicines for frontline treatment of diseases in developing countries and LDCs, where the majority of the HIV/AIDS sufferers come from. This inevitable plight, although well known, and posited by the developing countries and LDCs during the Uruguay round of negotiations, was overlooked. This also necessitated the Doha Deceleration, which does not seem to have addressed the problem. The developed countries have also successfully utilised the TRIPS Agreement's intellectual property rights protection criteria as a benchmark, to develop a much higher intellectual property rights protection agenda through the introduction of TRIPS-plus provisions in bilateral and other plurilateral agreements entered into with developing countries. The winners in the game are the patent holding pharmaceutical corporations, software corporations, media corporations, and the developed countries where they are incorporated. The one at the receiving end are the developing countries and the LDCs who were promised technology transfer to build a modern economy by the developed countries, but are faced with multiple problems of non-availability of affordable medicines for health care, besides others. This article seeks to study the justification for an extended intellectual property rights protection under the TRIPS Agreement through an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the intellectual property rights and the patent regime. It will be argued that the TRIPS Agreement is a major obstacle that the developing countries and the LDCs have been made to face as Members of the WTO, with no end in sight for their miseries, and that the only possible solution is a review, or amendment of the TRIPS Agreement.
The "EC Biotech Products" Ruling at the WTO and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
A recent dispute panel decision at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the European Commission's (EC) regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) raises some important questions about a United Nations treaty -the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The EC defended its regulatory regime with reference to its Protocol commitments, which take a precautionary approach to regulating GMOs. The WTO panel rejected the precautionary defense of the EC, and ruled that the Cartagena Protocol is not relevant if disputants are not party to the agreement. By confining the analysis of the environmental regulation of GMOs to a jurisdictional framework, the Panel has reinforced the schism between the WTO and the United Nations system. The modes of "cooperation" of the WTO with UN agencies have arguably reduced part of their functions to be technical support agencies for the WTO's global economic decision-making.
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The World Trade Organization (WTO) recently ruled on the case brought by the US, Canada and Argentina against the moratorium imposed by the European Union (EU) on imports of genetically-modified (GM) food and crops. Although the WTO's ruling has been greeted by the complainant countries as a victory, it found in their favor on only one narrow technical procedural issue, and it rejected more substantive challenges to the EU moratorium. In this article, we analyze the WTO report and explain the issues at stake, focusing particularly on the question of why the USA chose the WTO as the forum for its challenge to the EU moratorium, and whether it was wise to do so. Has the USA achieved its aims through the trade-specific WTO, or should it have taken its challenge to the more hostile, but environment-specific forum of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety? Alternatively, should the USA have refrained from mounting an official international challenge at all?
Yuridika, 2022
The rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has spawned an intense debate on the necessity of a waiver of some provisions of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to increase access to medicines and other medical technologies essential for combating the disease. Through a legal research method, this article explores the potential of the TRIPS waiver as a mechanism for reconciling the conflicting norms of public health with intellectual property rights protection by interpreting the TRIPS provisions backed by relevant legal theories. It argues that while the TRIPS waiver can be an effective legal instrument that accommodates public health concerns of increasing access to medicines and medical technologies, it has, in its current form and text, many flaws that militate against its effectiveness. These flaws are evident in how the TRIPS waiver is couched, notwithstanding that the waiver presents multiple benefits, including furthering re-humanisation, distributive justice and decolonisation goals. The article offers recommendations on how the TRIPS waiver adopted during the WTO's recently concluded 12th Ministerial Conference could be strengthened to eliminate some of its defects in expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines and other therapeutics products. The research methodology used in this article is the qualitative desktop doctrinal research method.