In theory, the vagueness of the World Trade Organization-administered TRIPS Agreement should provide developing countries with ample opportunities for creative interpretations of its provisions. Despite this, developing country freedom to exploit these opportunities is diminishing rapidly. Dispute settlement jurisprudence is one cause, but this is far less significant than that the United State...

To investigate whether intellectual property rights (IPRs) promote or hinder seed technology diffusion through trade, we use panel data for 134 countries over the period 1985-2010 to evaluate the impact of a country’s IPRs on its seed imports from the U.S. by estimating a gravity equation using both linear and nonlinear (Poisson) fixed effects methods. In both the static and dynamic models, the...

The Washington-based Human Rights Watch has joined an international campaign to pressure the US government into excluding provisions on patent extension from its proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Morocco. In a letter to US trade representative Robert Zoellick, Human Rights Watch said it was "very concerned that the US-Morocco FTA will make it impossible for Morocco to use the flexibiliti...

This paper maintains that the word ‘inventions’ in art 27.1 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 19941 (‘TRIPS’) imposes an obligation on member countries to ensure that the subject matter of a patent application be scrutinised and not presumed. Article 27.1 of TRIPS provides that ‘[p]atents shall be available for any inventions, whether products or processe...

The Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations in April 1994 and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 1995, raised many questions regarding India’s participation in the world trade, its integration with the world economy and the likely costs and benefits from this integration. In the light of this, the present paper tries to access India’s patenting activities in relation...

If you had asked the average policy wonk in the field of finance or development about TRIPS, even until a few years ago, you would probably have elicited a quizzical expression of surprise and bemusement, betraying mild condescension: how important can that be compared to broader and weightier matters such as exchange rates, fiscal policy, aid, and debt? But TRIPS, or the Trade-Related Aspects ...

The TRIPs agreement does not appear likely to alleviate any wealth differences arising from the existing North-South technology divide. Open-economy endogenous growth models suggest a dynamic shift towards further concentration of industrial R&D in the Northern countries. While production of goods developed as an outcome of this R&D may shift to Southern countries through the actions of multina...