The Tobacco Endgame: IP, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development - Matthew Rimmer

Australian Centre for Health Law Research
QUT Faculty of Business and Law

Intellectual Property and Public Health: Symposium

The Gibson Room, Level 10, Z Block, Gardens Point, QUT
Friday, the 8th December 2023

The Tobacco Endgame: Intellectual Property, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development
Professor Matthew Rimmer, QUT

Abstract

This presentation explores the relationship between intellectual property and sustainable development in the context of the public health efforts to address the global tobacco epidemic. It provides an account of the role of Gro Harlem Brundtland in both shaping the discourse of sustainable development, and building the institution of the World Health Organization, and establishing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control 2003. This presentation considers the legal conflicts over intellectual property and sustainable development. Big Tobacco has launched legal actions in superior courts, questioning the introduction of pioneering public health measures, such as graphic health warnings and plain packaging of tobacco products. There has also been disputes in investment tribunals and trade panels as to whether public health tobacco control measures are compatible with trade and investment laws. It examines the development of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and its treatment of tobacco control as a key target of the third goal focused upon public health. This presentation explores the relevance of other key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to the topic of tobacco control. In particular, it highlights questions around decent work and child labor. It examines the impact of tobacco production and use on the land and the environment. This presentation finally examines the efforts of tobacco companies to depict themselves as sustainable. It is argued that there is a need to take remedial enforcement action against tobacco companies engaged in greenwashing, which are making false and misleading claims about the environment, the climate, and sustainable development.

Biography

Dr Matthew Rimmer is a Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Faculty of Business and Law, at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He has published widely on copyright law and information technology, patent law and biotechnology, access to medicines, plain packaging of tobacco products, intellectual property and climate change, Indigenous Intellectual Property, intellectual property and trade, and 3D printing regulation. He is undertaking research on intellectual property and sustainable development (including the debate over the right to repair); greenwashing; intellectual property, access to essential medicines, and public health (particularly looking at the COVID-19 crisis), and tobacco endgame policies. His work is archived at QUT ePrints, SSRN Abstracts, Bepress Selected Works, and Open Science Framework.