Fifteen years after the WTO TRIPS Agreement entered into force, international IP law and policy have moved on. Since the mid-nineties, countries interested in higher IP standards have successfully shifted IP negotiations away from WIPO and WTO towards Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The trend...

By its title, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) considers itself a trade agreement. The negotiating parties, as well as its main proponents, emphasise the importance of strong intellectual property (IP) enforcement standards for international trade in IP protected goods. At the same...

The European Community (EC) is currently negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with several groups of developing countries. An element which the EC Commission likes to highlight is the objective of sustainable development. This article analyses the potential of this ‘presiding...