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Barasha Borthakur

Barasha

PhD Student

Profile

Thesis Title

Green Intellectual Property and TRIPS Flexibilities: Climate Mitigation Technologies as ‘Public Good’ and Climate Change as ‘National Emergency’

Supervisors

Summary of research

Climate change is the common concern of humankind which should be dealt efficiently through international cooperation. Innovations and transfer of environmentally sound technologies (“ESTs”) are one of the most effective ways to mitigate climate change which have been the prime focus of multiple multilateral agreements and negotiations. The research analyzes the access to such technologies which is vital for all the countries, irrespective of their developmental needs, so as to build a legal regime surrounding technology transfer (“TT”) of 
It broadly aims to answer the following questions: (i) whether, and, if so, to what extent the TRIPS Agreement offers legal and policy space which can facilitate innovation to enable effective and sustainable TT of ESTs? (ii) whether ESTs can be construed as ‘global public goods’ by employing a law and economics approach to the outlying problems? (iii) whether IPR is being a barrier to the dissemination of the wide variety of strategies required to combat the climate change? (iv) in order to build a ‘green intellectual property’ regime, how IPRs and its alternatives can be employed?

The research also deals with alternatives for enhancing technology transfer by exploring current TRIPS flexibilities, modifying the Agreement, non-IP flexibilities (like, technology pooling through a collective global approach, open innovation, global system to share know-how, initiatives on publicly funded technologies, bilateral or multilateral agreements for South-South solidarity etc.) and other legal and policy choices for the government and private sector.

Biography

Barasha is recipient of The Herchel Smith PhD Scholarship (2020) – granted by Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. She has completed her BA, LLB (Hons.) from National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam (2014-2019) with international law and constitutional law as her specialisation. She was an active member of the Centre for Child Rights where she volunteered, organised various seminars and workshops in collaboration with UNICEF. She has completed her LLM in IPR from National Law University, Jodhpur (2019-2020) where she was the recipient of ‘Late Smt. Vandana Devendra Mehta Memorial’ gold medal for securing the first position in merit (the highest CGPA holder).

She has undertaken/ is undertaking the following roles during her PhD:

Research

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