Daniel Gervais conceived of his definitive book, The TRIPS Agreement: Drafting History and Analysis, the fourth edition of which was released by Sweet & Maxwell on December 31, 2012, while working at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on TRIPS’ predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in the early 1990s. Gervais, who directs Vanderbilt Law School’s Intellectual Property Program, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the complex Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS Agreement, which became effective on January 1, 1995.
The result of extremely complex negotiations that established minimum standards for the treatment of intellectual property internationally, TRIPS remains the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property to date. It established a permanent, cooperative relationship between the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the WTO, which administers the Agreement. “The interpretation of the TRIPS Agreement is crucial to all cases involving international intellectual property rights,” Gervais said.
Gervais was serving on the GATT/WTO’s legal staff as the agreement was hammered out, and he immediately recognized the need for a detailed commentary that would illuminate and amplify TRIPS’ complicated provisions. “I was in the room as a member of the secretariat that was facilitating the discussion, heard the issues that were raised, and understood how and why the rules in the agreement had been established,” he said. “I knew that lawyers and judges would need to understand the original intent of the rules established in the TRIPS Agreement and how those rules had been arrived at.” When he moved to the WIPO, he began work on the book in earnest.
Gervais’ original TRIPS Agreement book, published in 1998, offered a careful history of the agreement’s development and inception, highlighted important compromises negotiated to establish TRIPS, and offered a detailed commentary on each section of the agreement. In subsequent editions, issued in 2003 and 2008, Gervais expanded the history section of the book to include discussions of important TRIPS disputes and their resolution.
In the newly released fourth edition, Gervais has added a number of original proposals for TRIPS provisions along with a much expanded commentary. “Countries file TRIPS disputes with the WTO, which has an international tribunal to adjudicate them,” Gervais explained. “That tribunal had been citing early drafts, and all members of the WTO should have access to these drafts, as should anyone trying to understand the scope and purpose of the Agreement.” Gervais has presented this new information in a grid showing the differences in the rules each nation originally hoped the agreement would incorporate and the actual provisions of the final agreement.
Gervais spent 10 years researching and addressing policy issues on behalf of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), before joining the legal academy. He is a panelist at the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre and serves as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of World Intellectual Property. He established and edits a website devoted to TRIPS. He became the first North American law professor elected to the Academy of Europe in 2012.