“TRIPS at 25 Webinar: TRIPS and competition” will look at the evolution of this particular dimension of competition policy and the legal context of the TRIPS Agreement. A forthcoming scholarly publication — “Competition Policy and Intellectual Property in Today's Global Economy” — will provide a fresh, global perspective on developments in this critical field. The webinar will also provide an informal introduction to some of the themes of this volume, in advance of its impending launch.

The webinar will map out the evolution of policy thinking in this area and will examine the practical implementation of diverse measures that seek to bolster a positive linkage between intellectual property (IP) and competition in jurisdictions around the world. The event will explore developments and policy issues in this area from an international and comparative perspective, including key doctrinal and policy issues, and the evolution of policy thinking over the past 25 years. A survey of related developments in a diverse range of economies, including more recent developments in emerging competition jurisdictions, will also be addressed.

Three discussions will guide the webinar: an introduction to “Competition Policy and Intellectual Property in Today's Global Economy” and an overview of the evolution of policy thinking by one of the authors, Professor Kovacic; perspectives on the IP-competition nexus, including from Giovanni Napolitano of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and several authors of chapters in the forthcoming volume; and a conversation on how the dialogue can be taken forward, led by another contributing author, Professor Eleanor Fox.

Registration for the webinar is available here.

The full programme of the event is available here.

The event will be live streamed through the WTO YouTube channel.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the TRIPS Agreement in 2020, the Secretariat organized a commemorative event on 24 November 2020, followed by a series of webinars continuing into 2021.  These allowed relevant stakeholders to reflect on the past, present and future of the most comprehensive multilateral treaty on intellectual property protection and enforcement.

The full series of events scheduled to commemorate TRIPS@25 is available here.