A Handbook on Negotiating Development Oriented Intellectual Property Provisions in Trade and Investment Agreements UNESCAP, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok 2017, XIII + 94
The drafting of the Handbook on negotiating development oriented intellectual property provisions in trade and investment agreements (Handbook here forth) was guided by the objective of supporting Asia and the Pacific economies in reaching successful and sustainable outcomes in trade agreement negotiations that involve intellectual property. To accomplish this objective, this Handbook first introduces the multilateral intellectual property system and explains the trends for additional intellectual property protection in international trade and investment agreements. Chapter 1 presents the main international intellectual property treaties, with a focus on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and its main features, focusing particularly on the flexibilities afforded by TRIPS. In addition, the chapter introduces how intellectual property rights can be protected via international investment agreements (IIAs), in particular the public policy implications of such protection, using landmark disputes such as the Plain Packaging challenges mounted by Philip Morris in Uruguay and Australia. Chapter 2 explores the topography of intellectual property inclusive trade agreements in Asia and the Pacific, based on the dataset created during the project. The chapter presents the stylized facts from the 91 Asia-Pacific trade agreements, in force in 2016, that contain intellectual property rights alongside brief narrative expositions of the findings based on the dataset. Chapter 3 builds on the international intellectual property framework and the empirical foundation on intellectual property-inclusive agreements from the Asia-Pacific in order to recommend approaches for the negotiation, interpretation and implementation of intellectual property provisions in free trade and investment agreements. These recommendations further benefit from earlier research work by a broad range of intellectual property-experts in a project conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Law. They are primarily aimed at offering suggestions for retaining important flexibilities of the multilateral intellectual property treaty framework – so as to ensure that countries remain able to design an intellectual property system that suits local needs. Chapter 4 concludes the Handbook by providing examples from state practice on provisions that can be used to integrate international intellectual property flexibilities into trade and investment agreements, and analyses which of those examples are fit for purpose.
