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
