IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/soueco/v12y2011i2p287-305.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement and Agriculture in South Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Dilani Hirimuthugodage

    (Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka. Email: dilani@ips.lk)

Abstract

One of the main objectives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to facilitate world’s trade and production. It enforces legally binding multilateral agreements on trade in goods, services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement was implemented to regulate standards of Intellectual Property (IP) regulations in WTO member countries. Being a member of the WTO and a signatory to the TRIPs Agreement, it was compulsory for Sri Lanka and five other South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives, India and Pakistan) to formulate its IP regulations to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. According to the agreement, by 2006 India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and by 2013 Bangladesh and Nepal have to provide legal protection to plant varieties and farmers’ traditional knowledge via patents or by an effective sui generis system or by both. All of the above six countries have during the past 15 years implemented or drafted several acts to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. Sri Lanka has passed the Intellectual Property Rights Act No. 36 of 2003 to comply with the TRIPs Agreement. However, this Act does not provide protection for plant varieties and farmers’ traditional knowledge as it does not allow patenting of plants. Due to several reasons such as lack of demand from civil society, a poor legal system, lack of properly established institutional system, etc,. Sri Lanka was unable to build an effective intellectual property rights regime complying with the agreement, especially for the agricultural sector. Further, due to a delay in establishing rules and regulations to comply with the agreement, the Sri Lankan agricultural sector faces several difficulties in international trade and it has also lost a number of opportunities to use its own plant varieties for the benefit of future generations. The article suggests several techniques and methods that could be followed in implementing intellectual property rights in agriculture in order to promote investments and accelerate trade especially in Sri Lanka. And also it suggests the importance of having a regional centre to manage intellectual property rights effectively among South Asian countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Dilani Hirimuthugodage, 2011. "The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement and Agriculture in South Asia," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 12(2), pages 287-305, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:soueco:v:12:y:2011:i:2:p:287-305
    DOI: 10.1177/139156141101200205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/139156141101200205
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/139156141101200205?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keith E. Maskus, 2000. "Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 99, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doanh, Nguyen Khanh & Gam, Nguyen Thi & Heo, Yoon, 2022. "The impact of intellectual property rights protection on trade: The role of a “third country” in market power and market expansion effects," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(1).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roffe, Pedro & Santa Cruz, Maximiliano, 2007. "Intellectual property rights and sustainable development: a survey of major issues," Documentos de Proyectos 3591, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    2. Lederman, Daniel & Saenz, Laura, 2005. "Innovation and development around the world, 1960-2000," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3774, The World Bank.
    3. Alireza Naghavi & Chiara Strozzi, 2011. "Intellectual Property Rights, Migration, and Diaspora," Working Papers 2011.60, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    4. Shiyuan Pan & Heng-fu Zou & Tailong Li, 2010. "Patent Protection, Technological Change and Wage Inequality," CEMA Working Papers 437, China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics.
    5. Lee Branstetter & Raymond Fisman & C. Fritz Foley, 2005. "Do Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firm-Level Data," NBER Working Papers 11516, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Bond, Eric W. & Saggi, Kamal, 2014. "Compulsory licensing, price controls, and access to patented foreign products," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 217-228.
    7. Lin, Jenny X. & Lincoln, William F., 2017. "Pirate's treasure," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 235-245.
    8. Desbordes, Rodolphe & Vicard, Vincent, 2009. "Foreign direct investment and bilateral investment treaties: An international political perspective," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 372-386, September.
    9. Mercedes Campi & Marco Dueñas & Matteo Barigozzi & Giorgio Fagiolo, 2019. "Intellectual property rights, imitation, and development. The effect on cross-border mergers and acquisitions," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(2), pages 230-256, February.
    10. Patricia Laurens & Christian Le Bas & Antoine Schoen, 2019. "Worldwide IP coverage of patented inventions in large pharma firms: to what extent do the internationalisation of R&D and firm strategy matter?," Post-Print hal-01725229, HAL.
    11. Danai Christopoulou & Nikolaos Papageorgiadis & Chengang Wang & Georgios Magkonis, 2021. "IPR Law Protection and Enforcement and the Effect on Horizontal Productivity Spillovers from Inward FDI to Domestic Firms: A Meta-analysis," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 235-266, April.
    12. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Biancini, Sara & Paillacar, Rodrigo, 2023. "Intellectual property rights protection and trade: An empirical analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    13. Bagchi, Aniruddha & Roy, Abhra, 2011. "Endogenous R&D and Intellectual Property Laws in Developed and Emerging Economies," MPRA Paper 31822, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Ming Liu & Sumner LaCroix, 2011. "The Impact of Stronger Property Rights in Pharmaceuticals on Innovation in Developed and Developing Countries," Working Papers 201116, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    15. Kamal Saggi & Difei Geng, 2014. "The nature of innovative activity and the protection of intellectual property: a post TRIPS perspective from Asia," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 14-00003, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    16. Ramesh Govindaraj & Gnanaraj Chellaraj, 2002. "The Indian Pharmaceutical Sector : Issues and Options for Health Sector Reform," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15231, December.
    17. Simplice A. Asongu & Antonio R. Andrés, 2017. "The impact of software piracy on inclusive human development: evidence from Africa," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(5), pages 585-607, September.
    18. Khoury, Theodore A. & Peng, Mike W., 2011. "Does institutional reform of intellectual property rights lead to more inbound FDI? Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 337-345, July.
    19. Simplice A. Asongu, 2021. "Global Software Piracy, Technology and Property Rights Institutions," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(3), pages 1036-1063, September.
    20. Chen, Yongmin & Puttitanun, Thitima, 2005. "Intellectual property rights and innovation in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 474-493, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    JEL: O34; JEL: K11; JEL: Q57; JEL: N55; Intellectual property rights; agriculture; plant varieties; bio-piracy; Sri Lanka;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • N55 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Asia including Middle East

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:soueco:v:12:y:2011:i:2:p:287-305. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ips.lk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.