The Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute is proud to host a seminar by Mr. Antony Taubman as part of the IP Seminar Series. The subject is "The TRIPS Agreement 20 Years On: The Last Analogue IP Treaty or the First Trade 2.0 Agreement?"

Speaker

Antony Taubman is currently Director, Intellectual Property Division of the World Trade Organization, with responsibility for the WTO's programmes on intellectual property, competition policy and government procurement. From 2002 to 2009, he was Director, Global Intellectual Property Issues Division of WIPO (including the Traditional Knowledge Division and Life Sciences Program), covering a wide range of programs on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, the life sciences, and related global issues including the environment, climate change, human rights, food security, bioethics and indigenous issues. After a diplomatic career, he left the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2001 to join the newly-formed Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, at the Australian National University, teaching and researching on international IP law.

From 1998 to 2001, he was Director of the International Intellectual Property Section of DFAT, and in that capacity was engaged in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on intellectual property issues, domestic policy development, regional cooperation, and TRIPS dispute settlement. He authored a training handbook on intellectual property and biotechnology, a monograph on the TRIPS Agreement and a comprehensive study on its implementation, and a range of academic and general publications on international intellectual property law and policy. Postgraduate teaching appointments at several universities include curriculum design and teaching at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, and Queensland University of Technology, as well as numerous contributions to other educational and training programmes in many countries. In 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a Bellagio residential fellowship for his work on TRIPS and public policy issues.

He joined DFAT in 1988 as a career diplomat, and his service included disarmament policy and participation in the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention, a posting in the Australian Embassy in Tehran as Deputy Head of Mission, and a posting to the Hague as Alternate Representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Chair of the Expert Group on Confidentiality. He previously worked for WIPO from 1995 to 1998, his duties then including development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, the development of the revised WIPO program and budget, and associated policy development. A registered patent attorney, he worked in private practice in the law of patents, trade marks and designs in Melbourne in the 1980s. His tertiary education has included computer science, mathematics, engineering, classical languages, philosophy, international relations and law, and he has taught ancient Greek philosophy at Melbourne University.