The Agreement on Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the World Trade Organization imposes an obligation on all member countries to protect plant varieties either by patents or by a sui generis regime or by a combination of both. India explored the sui generis option to provide protection to plant varieties. This legal regime recognizes the rights of commercial breeders and also grants a positive right to farmers and goes beyond the widely recognized international sui generis regime represented by the International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV). Notwithstanding this, India has made an application to join UPOV. However, with the present plant variety law, India's membership application to join UPOV may not be successful. The recent development of bringing the Seeds Bill, which dilutes farmers' rights provisions in the plant variety law, is important in this regard. The article argues that if the Seeds Bill is passed in its present form, it will dilute the beneficial provisions of the plant variety law and pave the way for India to join UPOV.

Rising investment treaty arbitration claims against India have resulted in India taking first steps towards a new investment treaty practice. This article argues that this practice should aim at reconciling investment protection with investment regulation. By comparing the formulation of key jurisdictional and substantive provisions in India’s stand-alone bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with those in investment chapters in India’s free trade agreements (FTAs), this article shows that formulations in FTAs investment chapters often present a better textual basis to reconcile investment protection with investment regulation. This could be made part of India’s new investment treaty practice. The article also assesses the provisions in the 2015 draft Model Indian BIT and concludes that the draft tilts the balance too much in favour of the host State’s regulatory power.

This article provides the first-ever detailed analysis of Non-Precluded Measures (NPM) provisions in India's International Investment Agreements (IIAs) from the perspective of India's regulatory power as a host nation. It critically analyses NPM provisions in fiftyseven Indian IIAs by studying the divergence in their formulation and argues that the present formulation of NPM provisions in Indian IIAs is inadequate for the exercise of regulatory power by India for all its policy needs. Hence, in the light of the growing pros and cons of investor treaty arbitration (ITA), the article concludes that NPM provisions in Indian IIAs should be reformulated in a manner that balances investment protection with India's regulatory power to pursue non-investment-related policy objectives.International Investment Agreements (IIAs) 1 are treaties signed at the bilateral, regional, or multilateral level by two or more countries to protect investments made by one country's investors in the other country.

Centad Working Papers are intended to disseminate the preliminary findings of ongoing research both within and outside Centad on issues around trade and development for the purpose of exchanging ideas and catalysing debate. The views, analysis and conclusions are of the author/s only and may not necessarily reflect the views or position of Centad. Readers are encouraged to quote or cite this paper with due acknowledgement to the author and Centad.