WTO members meeting as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council on 28–29 October 2014 responded to the latest developments on plain packaging for tobacco products, exchanged views on innovation, and heard about plans to make it easier to make sense of the huge amount of information they have shared with each other in the WTO.
They also continued to discuss whether legal disputes should be heard on intellectual property issues when the agreement has not been breached — known as “non-violation” disputes. In this and some other issues their positions remained broadly unchanged.
Meanwhile, some called for a review of technical assistance that considers the actual impact of the assistance.
