Jayashree Watal
Counsellor in the Intellectual Property Division of the WTO
Ms. Jayashree Watal is currently Counsellor in the Intellectual Property Division of the World Trade Organization from February 2001. She also holds the position of Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown Univeristy Law Center and of Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law, University of Melbourne. She teaches IP law/economics in the TRIPS module of the IELPO programme at the University of Barcelona since 2011.
Ms. Watal holds post-graduate degrees in both Law and Economics and has more than twenty two years of experience in government in India, of which ten years was devoted to policy, diplomacy, research and administration on intellectual property rights. She worked in the Government of India, Ministry of Commerce as Director, Trade Policy Division, New Delhi (1995-1998). She represented India at a crucial stage in the Uruguay Round TRIPS negotiations from 1989-90.
She has researched and published articles on issues related to law/economics of intellectual property rights, including a book Intellectual Property Rights in the WTO and Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, India and Kluwer Law International, 2001). She was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Development at Harvard University (2000) and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC (Oct. 1998-August 2000) and at the George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C. (1997- 2000).