WTO, China and Patent

Thanks to the Register f0r details of mullings by Peter Mandelson of a possible complaint to the WTO DSS by the EU in respect of China's enforcement of its patent laws. The patent laws are acknowledged to be adequate in themselves.

This is potentially interesting on many fronts: of relevance here is the impact of a finding that the Chinese courts, enforcement authorities and judicial systems did not enable laws compliant with TRIPS to be properly used. As one aspect of our project is development of a new national approach to IP interpretation, which we argue is consistent with TRIPS but anticipate others not accepting, we will be monitoring any developments closely.