Biography
Dr. S. Rama Rao, has been a legal academic, diplomat, legal adviser and a national and international civil servant. He worked with the World Intellectual Property Organization and was its Director and Head of its Office at the UN headquarters in New York until the beginning of 2014 from 1998. Prior to that he worked with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India from 1982, and was appointed as the Chief Legal Adviser in the Ministry, New Delhi in 2002. As a diplomat, he held the position of Legal Adviser to the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations from 1994 to 1998 and represented India in numerous meetings of the UN and its bodies, mainly the UN Legal (Sixth) Committee and its subordinate committees. Dr. Rao attended numerous meetings of the UN and its bodies, organized and/or acted as Chairman, Moderator or Panelist in several UN meetings, and drafted and launched several UN reports.
Dr. Rao has been a visiting professor at some universities in US and India. In 2021–2022, he worked as Microsoft Chair Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Policy at GNLU, India, and he also taught at National Academy of Legal Sciences and Research (NALSAR), India, in 2018 and ‘23, and is an honorary professor in some other national universities in India. He is also a Director and Chairman of some intellectual property bodies including Caribbean and American Intellectual Property Organization (CAAIPO), Intellectual Property Development Program (IPDP) among others.
The focus areas of Dr. Rao’s specialization include International Intellectual Property Law, WIPO, WTO, Public Health, Bilateral Investment Protection, International Environment Law, Sustainable Development including Rio Declaration, SDGs and earlier MDGs, marine biological diversity, indigenous issues including Permanent Forum and UNDRIP, Traditional knowledge and genetic resources, Cultural Expressions and intellectual property, Technology and Innovation, and arbitration particularly with reference to foreign investments, uniform domain names, UNCITRAL and commercial arbitration matters among other subject areas. He also worked on International Law, Law of International Institutions, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Court, International Law on Terrorism, and the Law of the Sea. He has published several articles in books and journals in these areas.
Dr. Rama Rao holds PhD and Masters in Philosophy degrees from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and LLM, LLB, and Bachelor of Science degrees from Law College, Andhra University, India. He worked at the Dalhousie University, Canada in 1982, was UN International Law Fellow in 1984, and worked at The Hague Academy of International Law, International Court of Justice, Office of Legal Affairs of the UN, and at the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), where he was also the Program Officer for human rights at its headquarters then in New York. Dr. Rao was also a member of the Indian Arbitration Council and later that of the SAARC Arbitration Council.