[TA] | Workshop | Reimaging Intellectual Property Rights through International IP Disputes – COVID-19 and Beyond
Friday | 8:00 – 9:00 UTC-5
JACOB GEORGE PANICKASSERIL
Bennett University & NALSAR University of Law (India)
COVID- 19 has exacerbated the need for access to medicines and knowledge by significant sections of the society without which States are plunged in recurrent crises with each wave of the pandemic. This brings to the surface the chasm between intellectual property rights as private commercial rights and the public interest user rights. Existing legal frameworks at the municipal levels have been dictated by commitment to the TRIPS Agreement minimum standards of protection approach and/or the TRIPS- Plus standards negotiated through free trade agreements. These legal provisions have not been able to envisage the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding public interest exceptions incorporated therein. As a result international disputes before the WTO and other institutions on the nature of intellectual property rights will have to re-examine existing provisions of intellectual property rights from a public interest lens hereinafter.
The session seeks to critically evaluate the numerous disputes before the international dispute settlement institutions on the basis of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements in the light of the abovementioned perspective.