Professor Antony Scott Taubman, FRSA; Trans-tasman registered patent and trademark attorney

Profile

Antony Taubman served as Director of the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division, of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 2009 to 2024, with responsibilities concerning the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), as well as the issue of trade and competition policy, entailing legal, policy, outreach, diplomatic, technical assistance, research, teaching and management aspects of these legal instruments and related policy issues, as well as dispute settlement. This role has included pioneering cross-cutting approach on holistic policymaking in the field of public health, involving a major initiative to build close practical cooperation and policy coordination between the World Health Organisation, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the WTO, and playing a central role in the international response to the Covid-19 pandemic, covering a wide range of intersecting public health, trade and intellectual property issues, cooperation and coordination with international organisations and initiatives, policy analysis and support for developing countries, support for renegotiation of international rules, engagement with civil society and the private sector, and the creation of new cross-cutting policy networks.

In this position, his contribution to promoting, mentoring and undertaking original research has included leading and contributing to a series of international collaborative research projects, culminating in the edited volumes Trade in Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Trade and Development in a Transformed Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Rights in Today's World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Making of the TRIPS Agreement (WTO, 2015). He also conceived and led the development of a new peer-reviewed academic journal, the WIPO-WTO Colloquium Papers, published annually since 2010, that aims to showcase scholarship by emerging scholars across the developing world.

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. This work laid the groundwork for far-reaching reconsideration of the policy foundation and rationale of the IP system, especially its relevance and legitimacy from the point of view of Indigenous communities, following a significant expansion of Indigenous participants in the work of WIPO. Previous service for WIPO from 1995 to 1998 concerned development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, the development of the revised WIPO program and budget, and associated policy development for emerging issues such as biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

From 1998 to 2001, he served as Director of the International IP Section of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (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.  His previous duties as an Australian diplomat included postings as representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and First Secretary, Australian Embassy, The Hague, and as First Secretary and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Tehran. He previously worked as a Disarmament Policy Officer in DFAT in Canberra.

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 programs in many countries. In 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a Bellagio residential fellowship for his work on TRIPS and public policy issues.

His many scholarly publications cover the law and policy of IP and international IP in general, as well as the development dimension of IP in the digital economy, the interaction of IP with competition policy, international dispute settlement, Indigenous IP rights, traditional knowledge and biodiversity, public health and IP, and ethics and IP, as well as a training handbook on intellectual property and biotechnology, a monograph on the TRIPS Agreement and a comprehensive study on the implementation of TRIPS.

Postgraduate Teaching

• Intellectual property, trade and public health
• International dispute settlement
• Intellectual property, biodiversity and traditional knowledge
• International intellectual property

Research

Research Interests:

• Intellectual property and human rights
• Intellectual property and digital trade
• Public health, trade and intellectual property: pandemic preparedness
• Traditional knowledge and biodiversity

Publications

• Trade in Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Trade and Development in a Transformed Global Economy, Cambridge University Press, 2022
• Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Rights in Today's World Economy, Cambridge University Press, 2021
• The Making of the TRIPS Agreement, WTO, Geneva, 2016
• WHO-WIPO-WTO Trilateral Study: Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between public health, intellectual property and trade, 2011 and 2020
• 'Solidarity as a Practical Craft: Cohesion and Cooperation in Leveraging Access to Medical Technologies within and Beyond the TRIPS Agreement', Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, Vol 29 No 2 (December 2022)
• ‘"Trade-Related" After All?  Reframing the Paris and Berne Conventions as Multilateral Trade Law’ in Interconnected Intellectual Property (edited by Graeme Austin, Andrew Christie, Andrew Kenyon and Megan Richardson), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020
• ‘How post-TRIPS negotiations reframe the "trade-related aspects" of intellectual property after TRIPS: the lessons of WTO accessions processes,’  in Alexei Kireyev and Chiedu Osakwe (editors) Trade Multilateralism in the Twenty-First Century: Building the Upper Floors of the Trading System Through WTO Accessions, Cambridge, 2017
• ‘Rethinking TRIPS: adequate compensation for non-voluntary patent licensing’, Journal of International Economic Law, 2008
• ‘Several kinds of 'should': the ethics of open source in life sciences innovation’, in Geertrui van Overwalle (ed) Gene Patents and Collaborative Licensing Models: Patent Pools, Clearinghouses, Open Source Models and Liability Regimes, Cambridge, 2009
• ‘Saving the Village: Conserving Jurisprudential Diversity in the International Protection of Traditional Knowledge’ in J. Reichman & K.E. Maskus (eds), International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Public Engagement

• Founding editor, WIPO WTO Colloquium Papers
• Co-convenor & Scientific Committee:
  • Intellectual Property and Innovation Researchers of Asia Network and Conference Series, 2018-2024;
  • IP Researchers Europe Conference, Geneva, 2018- 2023; 
  • Conference on Intellectual Property & Innovation in Africa, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2018
  • Conference on Intellectual Property & Innovation in Latin America, University of San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2022
• Judge, Final Rounds and Grand Final, John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition, 2023
• Fellow, Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce