Description

While bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTAs) have always coexisted with the World Trade Organization’s multilateral treaties, recent years have seen a significant rise in the number and reach of these RTAs, in particular as regards their intellectual property content. Although the most ambitious recent RTAs have experienced setbacks, the momentum for regional co-operation remains unbroken and has brought its relationship with the WTO rules into sharp focus.

This seminar examines this relationship from the point of view of the TRIPS Agreement, the WTO’s intellectual property treaty, whose approach to bilateral and regional IP rules contrasts markedly with that of GATT and GATS rules that deal with goods and services. For instance, TRIPS does not contain an exception that would exempt IP-related obligations in RTAs from the mostfavored nation treatment, the central non-discrimination principle of the WTO. Against this background, the talk will illustrate the substantive and institutional interaction between the multilateral IP regime and individual IP chapters in recent RTAs, as well as highlight a number of challenges that might arise in this nexus of public international law and private intellectual property rules.

About The Speaker

Mr. Wolf Meier-Ewert is a Counsellor in the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is responsible for the administration of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). In this capacity he gives legal advice in relation to Intellectual Property and the TRIPS Agreement to Members and Observers of the WTO and deals with TRIPS-related dispute settlement cases among WTO Members. He is the Secretary to the Special Session of the TRIPS Council, the negotiating group dealing with TRIPS negotiations under the Doha Round. He has widely lectured on TRIPS and WTO-related matters.