Merchants and missionaries: Patenting life, competing international obligations and the proselytization of a Realistic Utopia

Canadian patent legislation was recently amended to reflect a commitment in trade instruments to public health by providing developing countries access to essential medicines. Canada failed to take this opportunity to respond to the patent-human rights debate manifested in the patenting of life. Universal minimum standards for patent protection are now required of all WTO Members. This thesis considers how seemingly discordant rules under the trade and human rights regimes can be reconciled domestically and internationally in order to maximize regulatory and cultural diversity while minimizing state liability to citizens, patentees, and foreign states. A principled blend of historical, doctrinal, and interpretative textual analyses support the argument that states should not be discouraged by the threat of trade sanctions in giving human rights obligations priority over trade in domestic law and policy. A bi-furcated framework for appropriate state agency is provided. Patents have been extended to life and its building blocks by judicial fiat and administrative inertia rather than deliberate democratic parliamentary processes involving public participation. Two Supreme Court of Canada decisions obfuscate rather than clarify legal issues. A comparative examination of the Canadian context results in the first branch of the prescribed framework wherein domestic regulatory responses enabling governments to prioritize human rights consistent preferences for health over industrial policy are outlined. An anticipated international approach is necessary to complement national strategies in case of a resulting trade dispute and constitutes the second branch. The recognition of an equitable conduct defence (ECD) by WTO decision-making bodies is a necessary legal mechanism to protect a state's right to self-determination. This defence enables states to meet their human rights obligations and fulfill duties owed to citizens while removing any real or perceived international impediments to state action in the patenting life debate. Modernity has made all measures trade-related; the future existence and legitimacy of the WTO requires the organization to act as steward of broader social values that are consistent with its own institutional history and instruments but also with political ideals of a Realistic Utopia. The Millennium Development Goals demand no less from our merchants and missionaries.