1.Study on Impact of Increased Fees for Entry of Non-Immigrant Workers

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2.Marketing of GI Products: Unlocking their Commercial Potential

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3. Scheduling of Market Access commitments under Doha Round: Items of export interest to India in the market of its important trading partners

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4.Addressing SPS Challenges in India

The WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and phytosanitary Measures (SPSA) was negotiated with a view to set in place an array of multilateral rules that would, on the one hand, recognize the legitimate right of WTO Members to adopt SPS measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health, and on the other, would enshrine certain checks and balances to tackle the possibility of these measures emerging as non-tariff barriers (NTBs). However, the experiences of developing countries with SPS requirements imposed particularly by the developed countries bear testimony to the fact that SPSA has thus far proved rather ineffective in living up to the latter objective. This is largely attributable to the fact that, its dual objective notwithstanding, SPSA has left considerable space for Member countries to use SPS measures for protectionist purposes under the guise of their legitimate concerns. This space has been further reinforced by the mode of interpretation of SPSA by the WTO Dispute Settlement System. Written against this backdrop, this paper brings to the fore some of the key SPS challenges facing the developing countries by taking India as a case in point and explores certain plausible ways and means to cope with such challenges in an effective manner.

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5. Socio-economic Implications of Protecting Geographical Indications in India

Over the recent past, Geographical Indications (GIs) have emerged as a significant intellectual property rights issue in the Indian context. Since 15 September 2003, when the Indian GI Act came into force, more than hundred Indian products have been registered as GIs. However, there are several practical challenges confronting the stakeholders in India when it comes to the realization of the potential benefits ingrained in GIs. Apart from effective enforcement of the rights in the relevant markets (domestic and export), success of a GI is contingent, in a large measure, upon appropriate marketing and promotion of the product – tasks that are not only resource-intensive but also challenging to execute for many stakeholders from a developing country like India. It is all the more tricky to ensure that a fair share of the benefits accruing from the GI status of a product reaches the actual producers/artisans downstream the supply chain, unless an appropriate institutional mechanism is set in place towards that end. Against this backdrop, the paper attempts to explore the prospects of India in exploiting the potential benefits embedded in GIs and the key challenges confronting the country in its endeavour to realize such benefits.

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6. Article 39.3 of the TRIPS Agreement: Its Genesis and Present Context

Article 39.3 of the TRIPS Agreement has assumed considerable significance during the past few years since the associations of pharmaceutical majors in the United States and Europe made it a major plank of their campaign for strengthening the patent laws in favour of the patentee the world over.

This Article provides that WTO Members would have to provide for protection of undisclosed test or other data while giving approval for the marketing of pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical products, which utilize new chemical entities.

The study dealt with the following issues:

i. Genesis of Article 39.3 of the TRIPS Agreement, the proposals that were submitted during the Uruguay Round negotiations and the views expressed therein

ii. Providing an analysis of the dispute between Argentina and the United States over the inclusion of the provision relating to data exclusivity in the Argentinean patent law

iii. Examination of the national laws of identified countries in respect of data exclusivity and providing interpretation and commentary on their consistency with Article 39.3 of the TRIPS Agreement

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7. Relationship between Convention on Biological Diversity and the Agreement on TRIPS

This study was proposed in the context of the decision taken in Doha Ministerial Conference to consider the relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Agreement on TRIPS.

The Ministerial Declaration had indicated that work on this issue should be taken up as a part of the review of Article 27.3(b) of the TRIPS Agreement.
The dimensions of the CBD-TRIPS relationship have been considered in detail in the study. The broad set of issues that the study covers is as under:

i. Identification of the areas of conflict between the Agreement on TRIPS and the Convention of Biological Diversity

ii. Examination of the possible approaches for the protection of traditional knowledge and their holders

iii. Assessing the feasibility of benefit sharing arrangements with the holders of traditional knowledge

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8.New patent regime and the pharmaceutical industry in India

The strengthening of the intellectual property regime that has taken place with the introduction of the Agreement on TRIPS has evoked considerable debate in India. The focal point of the discussions has been the implications of the strengthening of the patent regime on the prices of medicines. The major concern in India was that the new patent regime would undermine the interests of the domestic industry engaged in the production of relatively cheap generic drugs, and this would throw open the Indian market to the global pharmaceutical majors.
This study provides an analysis of the implications of the TRIPS-compliant patents regime for the Indian pharmaceutical industry. The focus of the study is on the strategies adopted by the generic industry in India to meet the challenges of the strengthened patent regime for pharmaceuticals.

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9.Domestic Dimensions of Trade and Investment Liberalisation