Grosse Ruse- Khan, Henning --- "The Concept of Sustainable Development in International IP Law – New Approaches from EU Economic Partnership Agreements?" [2011] ELECD 456; in Kur, Annette; Mizaras, Vytautas (eds), "The Structure of Intellectual Property Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: The Structure of Intellectual Property Law

Editor(s): Kur, Annette; Mizaras, Vytautas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448766

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: The Concept of Sustainable Development in International IP Law – New Approaches from EU Economic Partnership Agreements?

Author(s): Grosse Ruse- Khan, Henning

Number of pages: 35

Extract:

14. The concept of sustainable
development in international
IP law ­ new approaches from
EU Economic Partnership
Agreements?
Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan*

The international intellectual property system cannot operate in isolation from
broader public policy questions such as how to meet human needs as basic
health, food and a clean environment. (Pascal Lamy)1

In international law, the concept of sustainable development has an
ambiguous meaning and several distinct connotations. Amongst those,
the principle of integration and reconciliation of economic, social and
environmental aspects functions as its core element. This principle finds
support in several general (as well as IP-related) provisions of the first com-
prehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), signed in October
2008 between the European Community and its member states and the
CARIFORUM group of Caribbean Countries. This agreement may serve
as a template: not only for EPA-negotiations with other regional groups
of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries; but equally for other



* Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and
Competition Law, Munich (Germany); email: [e-mail]. This
chapter has been prepared within the framework of a MPI project on reforming
the international intellectual property system. It is based on a policy paper for the
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and the
article `A Real Partnership for Development? Sustainable Development as Treaty
Objective in European Economic Partnership Agreements and Beyond', published
in the Journal of International Economic Law, 13(1) (2010).
1 Director General of the World ...