Antony Taubman (World Intellectual Property Organisation)
Keynote 2 December 2005
Antony Taubman is currrently Acting Director and Head of the Traditional Knowledge (formerly Global Intellectual Property Issues) Division of WIPO, a position he assumed in May 2002, with responsibility for programs on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore, and the life sciences. After a diplomatic career, he left the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2001 to join the newly-formed Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, at the Australian National University , teaching and researching on international IP law. He has also held a teaching appointment at the School of Law at the University of Melbourne , delivering a specialist postgraduate course on TRIPS Law and Practice. From 1998 to 2001, he was Director of the International Intellectual Property Section of DFAT, and in that capacity was engaged in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on intellectual property issues, domestic policy development, regional cooperation, and TRIPS dispute settlement. He has taken part in many training and capacity building programs on intellectual property law and TRIPS in Australia and a number of Asian countries. He has authored a training handbook on intellectual property and biotechnology, a comprehensive study on the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement, and a range of academic and general publications on international intellectual property law and policy.
He joined DFAT in 1988 as a career diplomat, and his service included disarmament policy and participation in the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention, a posting in the Australian Embassy in Tehran as Deputy Head of Mission, and a posting to the Hague as Alternate Representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Chair of the Expert Group on Confidentiality. He previously worked for WIPO from 1995 to 1998, his duties then including development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, and the development of the revised WIPO program and budget and associated policy development. A registered patent attorney, he worked in private practice in the law of patents, trade marks and designs in Melbourne in the 1980s.