Compulsory Licensing in TRIPS: Chinese and Indian Comparative Advantage in the Manufacture and Exportation of Green Technologies

Challengers to the United States’ global influence, such as Brazil, China, and India, have criticized heavy polluters like the United States and the United Kingdom for significantly contributing to the world’s total carbon emissions but failing to share its green technologies with the rest of the world. Utilizing Rio+20 to redefine Article 31(b) of the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement should create an international framework for transfer of green technology through a patent process called compulsory licensing. Compulsory licensing allows a country to bypass a patent and create a generic copy of a technology by licensing it within its borders

International Investment Law and Arbitration, Sustainable Development, and Rio+20: Improving Corporate Institutional And State Governance

The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”) will provide “a historic opportunity to define pathways to a safer, more equitable, cleaner, greener and more prosperous world for all.” Rio+20 comes twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, where participating governments agreed to several historic accords to promote a more sustainable environment. Subsequent conferences followed suit with more accords aimed at improving and augmenting preceding commitments. One of the most important documents that resulted from the 1992 Earth Summit was Agenda 21, a planning-oriented framework on redefining economic growth while also promoting social equity and ensuring environmental protections

The implication of the precautionary principle on international trade

This paper looks at the origin and nature of the precautionary principle as an emerging principle in international law that arises as a response to the impacts of human activities on the environment. As a chosen focus, this paper discusses the implication of the precautionary principle on international trade by looking at its relationship and interaction with international trade law under the World Trade Organization. This paper explores the consistency and conflicts between the precautionary principle and the rules under the WTO Agreements by examining the different and possibly similar values underlying both. This paper discusses the problem areas where the precautionary principle can conflict with WTO rules as well as explore areas where they can be made to comply with each other