BTIA: Study of Trips-Plus Provisions

“People recognize intellectual property the same way they recognize real estate. People understand what property is. But it's a new kind of property, and so the understanding uses new control surfaces. It uses a new way of defining the property”. - Michael Nesmith

Trade is one of the factors that connect two distant places of the world. No single country can declare unilaterally that it is self-sufficient in all its needs. If India needs technology, the US needs affordable IT human resource that runs their IT engines. Considering these things in mind, India and EU sought to enter into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), called Broad-Based Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) since 2007. However, there are certain hurdles in the finalisation of this instrument. Certain provisions of this instrument have been criticised as being TRIPS-plus provisions. The author seeks to study and investigate to what extent such provisions are against interest of India and the relevant provisions of the draft BTIA that are criticised to be TRIPS-plus arrangements.