Senior patents judge Mr Justice Laddie has called for developing countries to be exempted from the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO’s) controversial Trips agreement on intellectual property (IP) rights, claiming it unfairly impedes their development.

In an interview with Legal Week, Laddie said recent controversy over the supply of cheap unlicensed drugs to the Third World indicated that developing countries were simply not ready to take on the cost burden of a highly-regulated IP regime.