Professional Ethics: Unit 2 - Part 3 of 3: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Professional Ethics: Unit 2 - Part 3 of 3
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
Brijendra Pratap Singh
Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Motilal Nahru National Institute of Technology Allahabad
Prayagraj - 211004, India
October 2019
Brijendra Pratap Singh (MNNIT Allahabad) Professional Ethics: Unit 2 - Part 3 of 3 October 2019 1 / 36
World Trade Organisation (WTO)
Trade
The activity of buying and selling or of exchanging goods or services
between people or countries.
Balance of Trade
The difference in value between a country’s imports and export
Trade surplus: A country exports a greater value than it imports
Trade deficit: A country imports a greater value than it exports
Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism is associated with free markets and private ownership
of capital assets. It advocates the theory of comparative advantage.
Mercantilism
Mercantilism is a national economic policy that is designed to maximize
the exports, and minimize the imports, of a nation. If international trade is
against national interest, the country should better not participate. It
supports the policy of protectionism (policy of protecting domestic
industries from competition).
Protectionism uses many tools such as:

Tariffs Barriers
Tariffs: A tax on imports is called tariff. It is an important tool of raising
revenue; however, at times, countries also use the system of tariffs for
protectionism.
Non-Tariffs Barriers
Import Qutas: limiting the quantity of imports
Subsidies: Monetary help provided to the domestic producers to
make their product cheap so that it can compete with foreign goods.
Domestic Regulations: Government can fix restrictions on the
imports of foreign goods on the basis of environmental and health
regulations.
History of WTO
Economic depression of 1929
Smooth Hawley Tariff Act 1930 (USA)
Tariff War
World War II
History of WTO
Bretton Woods Conference 1944
Proposed for three international organisations:
IMF (International Monetary Fund)
IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
ITO (International Trade Organisation)
IMF and IBRD came into existence by 1947
For ITO: Draft agreement Havana Charter 1948 (not ratified by USA)
History of WTO
Geneva Conference 1947: Temporary multilateral trade agreement
was made
General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) came into effect in
January 1948 and was signed by 23 countries
In 1950, USA made clear that it will not ratify ITO.
GATT regulated international trade till 1995 (47 years) when it was
finally succeeded by WTO
GATT
It was not an organisation but an agreement
Participating countries were not called members but “contracting
parties”
Limited to removal to tariff in trade of goods
Trade in agriculture and textile was excluded from GATT
It has protocol for provisional application that countries were free to
implement only those provisions of the agreement which did not
violate any existing law of the land. This special privilege was called
“Grandfather’s Right”.
WTO
WTO was proposed with the conclusion of Marrakesh Agreement in
the Uruguay round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1994
WTO came into existence on 1 January 1995
Reasons Behind the Formation of WTO

Increase in non-tariff barriers from 1970
Shift in comparative advantage of developed countries from
manufactured goods to service
Demand by developing countries to include trade in agriculture and
textile within international trade regime
Grand Bargain
Developed countries agreed to include trade in agriculture and textile
under WTO with some exception
Developing countries allowed inclusion of service and intellectual
property rights under WTO
Fundamental Principles of WTO

Reciprocity: Mutual lowering of trade barriers thus countries that
lowered their tariff could expect their trading partners to do the same
Most Favored Nation (MFN): The MFN principle holds that the
tariff preference granted to one state must be granted to all others; in
other words, there could be no “favored nation” among members
National Treatment: National treatment means that foreign goods
are treated equally with domestic goods, and that countries are not
able to enact such policies that give their domestic product any
advantage over foreign product
WTO
Organisational structure
Decision making process
Dispute settlement mechanism
WTO: Organisational structure

Ministrial conference
General council (dispute settlement body, trade policy review body)
General council:
Council for trade in goods
Council for trade related aspects of intellectual property rights
Council for trade in services
WTO: Organisational structure

WTO is member driven institution
Negotiating agreements and implementing them all done by members
themselves
No executive body and very small secretariat (just 600 staff)
Secretariat is headed by director general
Ministerial conference is top most decision making body. It comprises
of trade and commerce ministers of member countries.
WTO: Decision Making Process

In theory:
voting procedure
one country one vote
decision by simple majority
In practice:
GATT style consensus method
principal supplier principle
green room meeting
WTO: Decision Making Process

Informal decision making process hurt the interest of developing
countries
There is a lack of transparency in the whole process
Many times developing countries are not consulted in the consensus
building process
Developing countries are also not invited in many of the Green Room
Meetings.
WTO: Dispute Settlement Mechanism

Consultation (60 days)
Establishment of Panel (45 days)
Panel examination and final panel report to parties ( 6 months)
Panel report submitted to Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) (6
months)
Appeal report (60 to 90 days)
DSB adopts report (60 days)
Implementation of recommendation
Non-Implementation of recommendation −− > Retaliation
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - GATT 1994
GATT 1994
Included provisions of GATT 1947 but expanded its scope to no-tariff
barriers. Asked all member states to submit individual tariff schedule.
GATT 1994
Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)
Agreement on the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures
Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC)
Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)

Liberalize agricultural trade in three signficant respects:
Market Access
Domestic Support Mechanism
Export Subsidies
Agreement on Agriculture (AoA): Market Access

Conversion of all non-tariff import restrictions into tariff: tariffication
All agricultural tariffs required to be bound
After binding the tariffs it should be gradually reduced over a period
of several years
Agreement on Agriculture (AoA): Domestic Support Mechanism

Direct Support: directly stimulate production and trade of agriculture
product (Subsidy - Highly restricted)
Indirect Support: Don’t affect production and trade direction
(Subsidy - non resticted)
General Agreement on Trade in Service - GATS
GATS
By 1981, for instance, services had come to comprise about 66% of
the GDP of developed countries and 67 % of their employment.
The idea of including trade in services within the GATT was first
proposed by the US at GATT’s ministrial conference in 1982
Has a built in agenda for successive negotiations
TRIPS
Intellectual Property
Ideas, Inventions, Discovery
Research and Development
Cost not shared by all
Public good problem
To solve public good problem
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights
TRIPS
To regulate the transfer of intellectual property from one country to
another country, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) is
created in 1967. But this organisatio was not effective enough to stop
the use of counterfeit or piracy.
TRIPS was included in the final WTO agreement signed at
Marrkakesh 1994 as a part of grand bargain.
TRIPS has 73 articles and 7 major parts

Copyrights
Trademarks
Geographical Indication
Patents
Lay-out Designs of Integrated Circuits
Undisclosed Information Including Trade Secrets
TRIPS
TRIPS required governments to modify their national legislation on
Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks to bring them in line with the
new agreement.
The agreement applied to such basic and everyday necessities as
medicines, and its application would affect the access of national
populations to life-saving drugs and technologies.
A few safeguards have been built into the TRIPS such as article 8 on
the right of governments to protect public health and even override
patents if need be.
Development Agenda
Developed Countries
Industrial product
Services
Technological goods
Inteelectual property
Developing Countries
Agricultural product
Textile
Raw material
First WTO Ministrial Conference

Held at Singapore 1996
Four issues were included called Singapore issues
Transparency in Government Procurement
Trade Facilitation
Trade and Investment
Trade and Competition
Seattle Ministrial Conference

Held at Seattle 1999
Huge stand-off between developed and developing countries
Developed countries tried to negotiate on singapore issues
Developing countries tried to negotiate for liberalisation on
agricultural and textile goods
It was failed badly
Doha Ministrial Conference

Held at Doha, November 2001
A new trade round initiated called Doha Trade Round or Doha
Development Agenda
It reconcile the conflicting interest of developed and developing
countries
Declaration on TRIPS and public health: developed countries allowed
developing country to produce generic medicine under compulsary
licencing during public health emergency
Doha Trade Round after 2001

Doha Trade Round was to be completed by 2005
Cancun Ministrial conference held in 2003 also faild badly
After the failure of Cancun Ministrial conference, a trade talk was
held at Geneva in July 2004 and resulted in July package.
July Package 2004

Singapore issues except “Trade Facilitation” were abandoned
Issue of cotton was included within agenda
Date of completion of Doha round was postponed indefinitely
Geneva Talks 2008

Talk conducted for nine days
Talk failed because India, USA, and China could not agree on the
issues of the agriculture
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO
WIPO is the global forum for intellectual property (IP) services,
policy, information and cooperation.
A self-funding agency of the United Nations, with 192 member states.
Mission is to lead the development of a balanced and effective
international IP system that enables innovation and creativity for the
benefit of all.
Mandate, governing bodies and procedures are set out in the WIPO
Convention, which established WIPO in 1967.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO
Promotes the protection of intellectual property rights in patents,
invention, trademark, book, music, photographs, etc.
Enforcement of IPR related treaties, the most important one being
“Patent Cooperation Treaty” (PCT).
A patent registered under PCT, has legal validity in all the countries
that have signed PCT treaty.
Coordinates with WTO for enforcement of TRIPS- Trade related
intellectual property rights and GI (Geographical indicator) tags.
Coordinates with national agencies to combat piracy- in medicine,
music, movies, software and other copyrighted products.
Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)
PCT
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law
treaty, concluded in 1970.
It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect
inventions in each of its contracting states.
A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international
application, or PCT application.
A PCT application does not itself result in the grant of a patent,
since there is no such thing as an ”international patent”, and the
grant of patent is a prerogative of each national or regional authority.
The PCT procedure essentially leads to a standard national or regional
patent application, which may be granted or rejected according to
applicable law, in each jurisdiction in which a patent is desired.

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Professional Ethics: Unit 2 - Part 3 of 3

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Brijendra Pratap Singh

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Protectionism uses many tools such as:

Reasons Behind the Formation of WTO

Fundamental Principles of WTO

WTO: Organisational structure

WTO: Organisational structure

WTO: Decision Making Process

WTO: Decision Making Process

WTO: Dispute Settlement Mechanism

Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)

Agreement on Agriculture (AoA): Market Access

Agreement on Agriculture (AoA): Domestic Support Mechanism

TRIPS has 73 articles and 7 major parts

First WTO Ministrial Conference

Seattle Ministrial Conference

Doha Ministrial Conference

Doha Trade Round after 2001

July Package 2004

Geneva Talks 2008

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