Our first speaker for this academic year is Jayashree Watal who will speak on “TRIPS and the Current Doha Round”. In her talk, she proposes to touch upon the current Doha negotiations, TRIPS and Development, IP and Public Health Issues, and issues of special interest to India such as geographical indications and protection of biodiversity. For those who wish to get a flavour of the latest IP issues thrown up by the current Doha round, see this excellent piece by Kaitlin Mara of IPWatch. Back to our speaker:
Jayashree Watal is presently a Counsellor in the Intellectual Property Division of the World Trade Organization (since February 2001). Before this she was a visiting scholar with the Center for International Development at Harvard University. From October 1998 to August 2000, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. She was also a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Law School from 1997 to 2000.
She has more than twenty-two years of experience in government in India, of which ten years of experience were in policy, diplomacy, research and administration on intellectual property rights, which includes having researched and published on issues related to intellectual property rights, including a book Intellectual Property Rights in the WTO and Developing Countries(Oxford University Press, India and Kluwer Law International, 2001). She has also consulted for the World Bank, UNCTAD and the UNDP in these areas.
The talk will be in the NUJS auditorium between 3 pm and 5.30 pm on August 12th.
I hope that some of our readers who are in Kolkata or nearby can attend. If you plan to attend, will you please email me at shamnad[at]gmail.com, so that I have some idea of the numbers? The address etc is listed on the NUJS website.
