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Sterckx, Sigrid --- "The WTO–TRIPS Patent Regime after Doha: Promises and Realities" [2007] ELECD 207; in Torremans, Paul; Shan, Hailing; Erauw, Johan (eds), "Intellectual Property and TRIPS Compliance in China" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and TRIPS Compliance in China

Editor(s): Torremans, Paul; Shan, Hailing; Erauw, Johan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845428754

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: The WTO–TRIPS Patent Regime after Doha: Promises and Realities

Author(s): Sterckx, Sigrid

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

11. The WTO­TRIPs patent regime after
Doha: promises and realities
Sigrid Sterckx*

1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT OVER IPRS
BETWEEN INDUSTRIALIZED AND DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
In a brilliant book by a science journalist which was published six years ago,
it was noted:

The emerging battles over knowledge assets are increasingly vital to each of us.
. . . their effects are pervasive, influencing our jobs, our schools, and our relations
with colleagues and neighbors. The results of these battles shape the type of medical
care we receive and the availability of the food in our refrigerators. Battles over
ownership of the rights to the world's storehouses of knowledge already have
largely determined who is rich and who is poor in our society. On a global scale,
these battles have begun to foster international conflicts, a trend that is sure to grow
in coming years.1

Indeed, in the meantime the international conflicts over access to information
and to products embodying information have clearly intensified.
These conflicts originated as early as the 1970s, when the developing coun-
tries took the lead in an attempt to have the international treaties on intellec-
tual property revised. In the early 1980s, both the industrialized countries and
the developing countries advocated a revision of the Paris Convention (1883),
an important multilateral treaty on patents. Yet, as a result of conflicting views
on the patent system, none of the revision attempts yielded concrete results.
The two sides had opposite intentions.
The industrialized countries wanted higher and ...