Symposium on the TRIPS Agreement for TRIPS Council Members and Observers

Centre William Rappard, WTO Headquarters, Geneva

On 26 February 2015, delegates and observers to the Council on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) heard from some of the actual negotiators in the 1986–94 Uruguay Round about how the round brought intellectual property into the multilateral trading system, and from other experts about what has happened since and what could be its future.

Programme

Morning session
09:00 - 09:10	Setting the Scene: TRIPS at 20 Antony Taubman, Director, Intellectual Property Division, WTO
09:10 - 09:30	Keynote address Personal Recollections and Reflections of the Chairman of the Uruguay Round TRIPS negotiating group Lars Anell, Chairman, Swedish Research Council
09:30 - 13:00	Session 1 Lessons from TRIPS Negotiations for future multilateral work on intellectual property (Panel discussion led and moderated by Adrian Otten, former Director, Intellectual Property Division, WTO)
09:30 - 09:50	Lead Speaker	Overview of the Stages of TRIPS Negotiations Adrian Otten, former Director, Intellectual Property Division > Presentation
09:50 - 12:30	Panellists	Mogens Peter Carl, Former Director General in the European Commission, DG Trade, DG Environment (negotiator for the EU) Peter Po Tak Cheung, Consultant, Hong Kong, China/David Fitzpatrick, Barrister England and Wales and Hong Kong, China, (negotiators for Hong Kong, China) Thomas Cottier, Director World Trade Institute, Bern/Thu Lang Tran Wasescha, Consultant (negotiators for Switzerland) Catherine Field, former Deputy General Counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (negotiator for the US) A.V. Ganesan, former Commerce Secretary, Government of India/Jayashree Watal, Counsellor, Intellectual Property Division (negotiators for India) John Gero, former Ambassador of Canada to the WTO (negotiator for Canada) Adrian Macey, former Ambassador for Climate Change, government of New Zealand and now Senior Associate, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington (negotiator for New Zealand) Umi Kalthum Binti Abdul Majid, Judge in Court of Appeals, Malaysia (negotiator for Malaysia) Piragibe dos Santos Tarragô, the Permanent Representative of the Federative Republic of Brazil to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, The Hague (negotiator for Brazil) Antonio Gustavo Trombetta, Ambassador of Argentina to Switzerland (negotiator for Argentina) Hannu Wager, Counsellor, Intellectual Property Division (negotiator for the Nordics)
12:30 - 13:00	Moderated by Antony Taubman	Questions from the floor and open discussion
13:00 - 14:00	Lunch break
Afternoon session
14:00 - 15:30	Session 2 Legal and Economic Impact of TRIPS: Implications for global IP policy debates (Led by Robert Koopman, Chief Economist, WTO)
14:00 - 14:30	Speakers	The Legal and Economic Impact of TRIPS: An Overview Keith Maskus, Arts and Sciences Professor of Distinction in Economics, University of Colorado > Presentation
14:30 - 15:00		The Legal Impact of TRIPS in the area of Industrial Property Marco Aleman, Acting Director, Patent Law Division, WIPO > Presentation
15:00 - 15.30		The Making of the Para 6 Solution and its Implementation So Far Jayashree Watal and Roger Kampf, Counsellors, Intellectual Property Division > Presentation > Presentation
15:30 - 16:00		African Group Participation in the Para 6 Solution: Reflections of a Former Negotiator Felix Maonera, Deputy Head, Geneva Office, Secretariat of the African Caribbean and Pacific > Presentation
16:00 - 16:30	Questions from the floor and open discussion
16:30 - 18:00	Session 3 Future of IP issues in the Multilateral Trading System (Led by Carlos Primo Braga, Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the Evian Group, Lausanne)
16:30 - 17:00	Key speaker	Future of IP issues in the Multilateral Trading System Thomas Cottier, Director World Trade Institute, Bern Switzerland's TRIPS negotiator > Presentation
17:00 - 17:30	Commentator	Prof Li Mingde, Director Intellectual Property Centre, Institute of Law and Intellectual Property Centre, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, P. R. China > Presentation Paulin Edou Edou, Director General, African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI)
17:30 - 17:55	Questions from the floor and open discussion
17:55 - 18:00	Closing Remarks Jayashree Watal