Taylor University Chapel

Dr. Ruth Okediji

Professor Okediji’s research and scholarship examine innovation policy, the digital economy, and global knowledge governance. She has authored an extensive array of publications on the relationship between IP protection, innovation policy, and human flourishing. She is widely cited for her scholarship on the design and implementation of IP norms in developing and least-developed countries consistent with human welfare goals, as well as her leading work on legal regimes for the protection of genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Her latest book, Traditional Knowledge and Modern Justice, is forthcoming in 2027.

Professor Okediji has served as a policy advisor to inter-governmental organizations, regional economic communities, and national governments on a variety of issues at the intersection of IP, international economic law, and human development, as well as on the formulation of IP, trade, and competition policies for the digital era. She was the lead expert and negotiator for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (2013) and the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (2024). In 2015, she was appointed by United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines.