Dilan Thampapillai

An Overview of Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific Region with a Particular Focus on Intellectual Property

This chapter provides an overview of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in the Asia-Pacific region. It examines the multiple interpretations of the ‘Asia-Pacific’ and asks about the usefulness of this concept as a focus of comparison. It explains the political and economic background of concluded agreements, the negotiations in progress and the formation of regional clusters of FTAs, and also shows the enormous differences in IP content in the various agreements. With the exception of Japan, Asia-Pacific countries appear as relatively reluctant converts to higher IP standards. Even the industrialized economies of the region that had to increase their IP standards after agreements with the US, EU or Japan do not necessarily impose the same standards on regional neighbours. Instead, ‘soft diplomacy’ in IP matters is important to countries in the region, as is new subject matter for intellectual property protection such as traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and food security in the context of international intellectual property rights protection

This chapter identifies the causes of chronic food insecurity as a form of market failure facilitated by the rules of international intellectual property law, as primarily embodied in the Agreement on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While acknowledging that food insecurity is not a problem solely created by the post-TRIPS legal environment, this chapter argues that the legal rules on intellectual property play a significant role in supporting and encouraging those market forces that adversely impact upon the access, availability and affordability of food, and in causing significant disruptions to the traditional farming practices of farmers in the Global South. International responses, orchestrated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), to the food security problem in the context of agriculture, comprising the movement towards farmer’s rights and the right to food, have offered some useful solutions to the crisis. After examining the legal frameworks relevant to food security, this chapter provides three critiques of FAO’s response to the problem of food security with the finding that the regime conflict deprives FAO of a useful role in norm creation, effective administration of food security, and reconciliation of ‘norm collision’ to overcome a property-type policy response.