Post-master’s degree in trade law (DESS), the University of Paris-V; M.A. (Economics), Gokhale Institute for Politics and Economics, Pune, India; B.A., Fergusson College, Pune, India. Ms. Watal was Counsellor in the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competition Division of the World Trade Organization from February 2001 to July 2019, where she has dealt inter alia with negotiations on TRIPS and public health. She has been a member of the Governance Board of the Medicines Patent Pool, Geneva from 2015 to 2021. She has more than twenty-two years of experience in government in India, of which ten years was devoted to policy, diplomacy, research and administration on intellectual property rights, including representing India in the TRIPS negotiations. She has researched and published on issues related to intellectual property rights, including being the author of a book Intellectual Property Rights in the WTO and Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, India and Kluwer Law International, 2001) and an editor of several volumes on IP published by the WTO, including A Handbook on the WTO TRIPS Agreement (CUP, 2012); The Making of the TRIPS Agreement (WTO, 2015); and Trade in Knowledge (CUP 2021). She was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Development at Harvard University (2000) and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC (Oct. 1998-August 2000) and at the George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C. (1997- 2000). She worked in the Government of India, Ministry of Commerce as Director, Trade Policy Division, New Delhi (1995-1998). She has also taught aspects of the TRIPS Agreement at the University of Barcelona (IELPO), University of Melbourne Law School and at the World Trade Institute, Berne, Switzerland.
