Balancing Obligations to Develop Climate Change Technologies with IP and Trade Objectives: An Evaluation of the Systemic Integration of the Paris Agreement into TRIPS

This article aims to determine how the systemic integration of the Paris Agreement on climate change into TRIPS could better balance the development of climate change technologies with IP and trade objectives. It first demonstrates that there is justification for systemically integrating the Paris Agreement into TRIPS. Second, it analyses Arts. 7 and 8 TRIPS, which form an “individual key” for integration. It demonstrates that these provisions have the potential to integrate the public interest in the development of climate change technologies. Third, it shows that the systemic integration of the Paris Agreement into TRIPS could achieve synergy between the WTO and UNFCCC regimes on the question of IP and the development of climate change technologies. Articles 10 to 12 of the Paris Agreement could constitute relevant rules of international law that explain how climate change technologies could be developed in developing countries. These articles could be integrated either directly into TRIPS rights and exceptions or into Arts. 7 and 8 TRIPS to achieve a “double integration”. Fourth, this article infers that the systemic integration of Arts. 10 to 12 of the Paris Agreement into TRIPS rights and obligations combined with the “double integration” into Arts. 7 and 8 could provide a set of pertinent interpretations of TRIPS that would better balance the development of climate change technologies with IP and trade objectives. It could provide more convincing arguments for integrating external interests into TRIPS than simply relying on Arts. 7 and 8 TRIPS.