Ensuring the Conformity of Domestic Law with World Trade Organisation Law India as a case study

The 1994 Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization (the WTO Agreement), requires each WTO member to “ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations and administrative procedures with its obligations as provided in the annexed Agreements.” It is natural for the issue of WTO conformity to be a subject of much attention if it should arise in the most representative and the only compulsory dispute settlement in the world. It is this conformity that the paper deals with. The paper analyzes legal issues that arise in the overall context of WTO conformity of Indian law with India’s WTO obligations. The substantive issue that most prominently emerges here is patent protection in the field of pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical products, together with the issue of legality of acts or omissions of the Indian executive and the competence of WTO panels to decide on them.