The WTO has just finished two and one half years of negotiations on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, with an additional tranche of negotiations scheduled to commence soon. These negotiations have been extraordinarily instructive on the subject of trade diplomacy and the means by which ends...

This report identifies and analyses trends in the local production of medicines in developing countries and related technology transfer. The objective is to assist the World Health Organization (WHO) in its support for Member States in implementing the global strategy and plan of action on...

In the decade since the Doha Declaration was adopted, significant progress has been made in addressing problems associated with innovation and access to medicines, including through expanded financial support for procurement and distribution of treatments and vaccines and the establishment of...

The patenting of biotechnological inventions potentially affects human rights in a number of ways. Human rights to identity and the practice of religion may be affected by the availability of patents on genetically modified human beings (or elements of the human body). Patents as mechanisms for...

In August 2001 the first public meeting of the American Society of International Law Project on Human Rights and International Trade (‘Project’) was held at the World Trade Institute in Berne, Switzerland. One session of that meeting was devoted to the relationship between human rights and...

We are considering the relationship between human rights and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS). Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have always reflected a balancing of general public interests and private stakeholder interests, and in this sense IPRs take into...

Study of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) has formed an integral part of the work program of the Committee on International Trade Law of the International Law Association (ILA) since its inaugural meeting at the headquarters of the GATT in 1993. In June 1995 in...

China's transition from a statist to market economy over the past 15 years and its successful establishment of globally competitive industry are unprecedented historical events. Although China's entry into the WTO is not responsible for that transformation, it has played an important role....

This article addresses industrialized countries' growing concerns over technology transfer and their efforts to obtain protection of intellectual property rights under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It analyzes the intellectual property problem in the context of the GATT...

The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (in its Paragraph 6) recognized that developing countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector could face difficulties in making effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement....