This course will cover the principal international institutions dealing with substantive IP law, current international debates, and the practice of WTO dispute settlement. Topics include:  

• The international framework for intellectual property law
• Background to WIPO and the WTO TRIPS Agreement
• Intellectual property as an international issue in relation to trade, development, technology transfer, the environment, and human rights
• The law and practice of the WTO TRIPS Agreement
• Current international responses to intellectual property issues Harmonisation and diversity in national intellectual property law

This course considers a number of key issues of the debate over intellectual property and development, including:  

This unit will examine intellectual property law from an international perspective, ranging from current international policy debates on development, biotechnology, genetic resources and electronic commerce, to international dispute settlement under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. It is expected that students will have on completion of the unit:  

• An understanding of the history and comparative roles of the various elements of the international system which deal with intellectual property law
• A capacity to analyse international policy issues concerning intellectual property, and the manner in which various international negotiations and institutions deal with these issues
• A comprehensive knowledge of the issues concerning intellectual property and development
• An understanding of the interaction between intellectual property law and legal mechanisms on trade, environment, and human rights
• A practical grasp of the jurisprudence and procedure of the application of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to intellectual property disputes

Familiarity with emerging issues and issues under negotiation, including those concerned with access to knowledge, biotechnology, climate change, trade marks and geographical indications, access to genetic resources, and the protection of traditional knowledge. 

In keeping with the approach of the course, students can choose a topic in their area of interest or in consultation with the convenor.

Compulsory Research Essay.  Word length: 6,000 to 8,000 words.

26 Contact Hours (Intensive Delivery)

LAWS8182 Principles of International Law or LAWS8015 Fundamentals of Government and Commercial Law

Jeremy de Beer, (ed.) Implementing the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Development Agenda (Ottawa, Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009).

Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy (London: United Kingdom Government, 2002).

Daniel Gervais, (ed), Intellectual Property, Trade and Development: Strategies to Optimize Economic Development in a TRIPS-Plus Era (2007); and

Amy Kapczynski, ‘The Access to Knowledge Mobilization and the New Politics of Intellectual Property’ (2008) 117 Yale Law Journal 804-885

Thomas Pogge, Matthew Rimmer and Kim Rubenstein, (ed.) Incentives for Global Public Health: Patent Law and Access to Medicines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, (forthcoming), http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521116565

Neil Weinstock Netanel (ed.) The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual Property and Developing Countries (2008)

World Intellectual Property Organization. 45 Recommendations under the World Intellectual Property Organization Development Agenda. Geneva: World Intellectual Property Organization, 2007, http://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/agenda/recommendations.html#c