Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Law
Intellectual Property: A Beacon For Reform Of Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Daniel Gervais
Intellectual Property: A Beacon For Reform Of Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Daniel Gervais
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article attempts to resolve clashes between intellectual property and investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”). ISDS clauses contained in bilateral, plurilateral, or multilateral trade and investment agreements give multinational investors (corporations) a right to sue a state in a binding proceeding before an independent arbitral tribunal. This jurisgenerative right to file a claim against a state in an international tribunal with mandatory jurisdiction is exceptional; it is generally reserved to other states. Only multinational corporations can use ISDS to file claims against states in which they invest, provided the state is party to a bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”) or a trade …
The Effect Of The 1886 Berne Convention On The U.S. Copyright System's Treatment Of Moral Rights And Copyright Term, And Where That Leaves Us Today, Samuel Jacobs
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The 1886 Berne Convention was the most influential copyright related treaty for over a century, and provided important minimum substantive protections for authors. Key provisions included the establishment of the principle of National Treatment, the abolishment of formalities in order to receive copyright protection, a required copyright term of life of the author plus fifty years, and most offensive to the U.S. copyright system, the mandate that signatories provide authors non-economic moral rights. Despite the international importance and widespread acceptance of the Berne Convention, the U.S. did not join the Convention for over one hundred years, making it one of …
From Incentive To Commodity To Asset: How International Law Is Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Susy Frankel
From Incentive To Commodity To Asset: How International Law Is Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Susy Frankel
Michigan Journal of International Law
The intellectual property landscape is changing. As Jerry Reichman once observed, intellectual property rights were islands in a sea of the public domain until domestic laws expanded to include such “innovations” as business methods, software, scents, and sounds and turned the public domain into a pond surrounded by a continent of rights. Reichman spoke towards the end of the 20th century, and whatever problems accompanied this change, in truth (to paraphrase Voltaire’s view of the Holy Roman Empire), the concept of “intellectual property rights” was predominantly about neither “property” nor “rights” (nor was it always “intellectual”). Rather, copyright, patent, and …
Multipolarity, Intellectual Property, And The Internationalization Of Public Health Law, Sam F. Halabi
Multipolarity, Intellectual Property, And The Internationalization Of Public Health Law, Sam F. Halabi
Michigan Journal of International Law
The cause of global health today is arguably the most influential human rights movement ever seen, mobilizing vast flows of direct and indirect aid to the developing world to fight disease and build health care infrastructure; prompting the establishment of international organizations like UNAIDS and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund); including global health as a priority in major diplomatic summits; and driving the formation and implementation of international agreements to address global health threats. Champions of this movement claim that the diverse and influential state and non-state actors participating in the development of the …
Rebalancing Trips, Molly Land
Rebalancing Trips, Molly Land
Michigan Journal of International Law
Application of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) dispute resolution procedures to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement) has provoked a variety of reactions over time. At its inception, the decision to enforce the treaty through the WTO's dispute resolution process was widely viewed as a loss for developing countries. Many feared it would lead to an explosion of litigation against developing countries and cause distortions in domestic intellectual property (IP) policy making. More recent scholarship, however, has argued that these fears were unfounded. Few disputes before WTO panels have involved violations of the TRIPS Agreement, even …
Toward A Trips Truce, Patricia L. Judd
Toward A Trips Truce, Patricia L. Judd
Michigan Journal of International Law
The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS or Agreement), now over fifteen years old, regulates a marketplace characterized by extraordinary dynamism, influenced by the constant forces of globalization and technological evolution. Attempts to regulate this market raise natural, persistent questions concerning the Agreement's ability to serve its respective constituencies and adapt to change. The Agreement operates in the midst of an age-old dynamic pitting developing and developed countries against one another, especially when it comes to domestic enforcement against piracy and counterfeiting-a dynamic in which TRIPS has been criticized as a one-sided instrument. …
Patents And Diversity In Innovation, Brian Kahin
Patents And Diversity In Innovation, Brian Kahin
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Over the past quarter-century, the patent system has expanded in scope and significance, claiming a central position in a U.S. economy increasingly based on knowledge and intangible assets. This historic expansion has come at the cost of controversy and, within the past five years, growing public scrutiny from outside the system--from the press, business, Congress, and finally the Supreme Court. However, proposed reforms are marked by deepening divisions between sectors of the economy. The information technology (IT) and services industries favor strong reforms while pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as well as the patent bar, favor modest, incremental reforms. This yawning …
Diversifying Without Discriminating: Complying With The Mandates Of The Trips Agreement, Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Rochelle C. Dreyfuss
Diversifying Without Discriminating: Complying With The Mandates Of The Trips Agreement, Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Rochelle C. Dreyfuss
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Since the Patent Act was revised in 1952, patent law has expanded to cover an array of novel endeavors--new fields of technology (notably computer science and business methods) as well as the activities of researchers engaged in fundamental scientific discovery. These changes have been accompanied by shifts in the organizational structure of the technological community, with smaller firms and universities emerging as important players in the patent system, and by new marketplace expectations arising from consumer demand for interoperable technology and converging functionality. As a result of these developments, structural flaws in the legal order have become evident. Although the …
Biopiracy And Beyond: A Consideration Of Socio-Cultural Conflicts With Global Patent Policies, Cynthia M. Ho
Biopiracy And Beyond: A Consideration Of Socio-Cultural Conflicts With Global Patent Policies, Cynthia M. Ho
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article provides afresh and multi-dimensioned approach to a long-standing claim of biopiracy patents made by developing countries and communities. The basic principles of patent law and policy are first established to provide a foundation from which to evaluate the claim that genetic resources and traditional knowledge from developing countries are being misappropriated in a variety of ways that are loosely referred to as biopiracy. The Article distinguishes rhetoric from reality in examining biopiracy allegations from the perspective of national patent laws, as well as international agreements. In addition, the Article explains the underlying conflicts, misconceptions, and historical biases that …
Paper Dragon: Inadequate Protection Of Intellectual Property Rights In China, Omario Kanji
Paper Dragon: Inadequate Protection Of Intellectual Property Rights In China, Omario Kanji
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note will explore the extent to which China is in violation of its obligations under TRIPs. Section I surveys the current state of IPR infringement in China. Section II analyzes relevant TRIPs provisions, case law, and treaties that supplement TRIPs provisions. Section III analyzes Chinese criminal law, the December 2004 Judicial Interpretation of Chinese criminal law, and Chinese IP law as they pertain to IPR infringement. Section IV outlines enforcement efforts in China against the backdrop of the law analyzed in the previous section. Section V evaluates these enforcement efforts given China's capabilities and obligations, and Section VI concludes …
Power, Norms, And International Intellectual Property Law, Tai-Heng Cheng
Power, Norms, And International Intellectual Property Law, Tai-Heng Cheng
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article begins with the premise that international law is the net result of global processes of interactions among state and non-state participants in the international system. The Article builds on the author’s previous work by proposing a theory of international law that fills the interstices between private and public international law. Participants generally deploy power and invoke legal and social norms in pursuit of interests and in response to the strategies of other participants. Eventually, outcomes that reflect both power and norms result, and these outcomes in turn modify norms and reallocate power. New outcomes then follow in future …
Staying Within The Negotiated Framework: Abiding By The Non-Discrimination Clause In Trips Article 27, Kevin J. Nowak
Staying Within The Negotiated Framework: Abiding By The Non-Discrimination Clause In Trips Article 27, Kevin J. Nowak
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note argues that the Panel in Canada-Generic Medicines correctly decided that the non-discrimination clause in Article 27 applies to the exceptions of Articles 30 and 31. Because Article 27 is the guiding force of Section 5, any exceptions to the rights granted under Section 5 must comply with the requirements set forth in Article 27. Although extreme applications of the non-discrimination clause could be limiting upon some exceptions, Articles 30 and 31 were not placed into TRIPs as complete escape clauses from the framework of Section 5. Additionally, the application of the non-discrimination clause to Articles 30 and 31 …
Assessing Clashes And Interplays Of Regines From A Distributive Perspective: Ip Rights Under The Strengthened Embargo Against Cuba And The Agreement On Trips, Robert Dufresne
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article examines the clash of the two regulatory frameworks from the angle of distributive justice. By doing so, I suggest that in addition to the important issues of legitimacy, substantive norms, and hierarchy of legal orders, clashes between potential regulatory frameworks should also be conceptualized in the way in which they allocate goods (here the rights associated with IP) or recognize claims to or interests in such goods. The reasons for being concerned with distributive justice are threefold.
The Desirability Of Agreeing To Disagree: The Wto, Trips, International Ipr Exhaustion And A Few Other Things, Vincent Chiappetta
The Desirability Of Agreeing To Disagree: The Wto, Trips, International Ipr Exhaustion And A Few Other Things, Vincent Chiappetta
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article proposes a procedural and substantive approach specifically designed to achieve this result. Concerning process, interim national and regional decisionmaking and the multilateral debate must expressly broaden and clarify the values and interests at stake. Three basic operational principles advance this objective. First, comparisons based on IPR labels (patent, copyright, and the like) confuse rather than illuminate. Instead, focus must be on the actual underlying policy justifications and objectives. Second, the full range of implicated justifications (economic and otherwise), including those outside the decision-makers' own norms, must be expressly identified and considered. Finally, any position taken or decision reached …
Copyright And International Trips Compliance (Symposium: Fifth Annual Conference On International Intellectual Property Law And Policy), Shira Perlmutter, Jerome H. Reichman, Whitmore Gray
Copyright And International Trips Compliance (Symposium: Fifth Annual Conference On International Intellectual Property Law And Policy), Shira Perlmutter, Jerome H. Reichman, Whitmore Gray
Other Publications
MS. PERLMUTTER: We have heard today about copyright in two different regions of the world, in Central and Eastern Europe' and in China. In recent years there has been an increasing convergence in the substance of national laws in different regions of the world. One of the major factors has been the TRIPs Agreement? I will focus on the current efforts toward implementing the TRIPs Agreement, and this will be a procedure-oriented talk.
Theft By Territorialism: A Case For Revising Trips To Protect Trademarks From National Market Foreclosure, Beth Fulkerson
Theft By Territorialism: A Case For Revising Trips To Protect Trademarks From National Market Foreclosure, Beth Fulkerson
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note will argue that the "well-known mark" standard of the Paris Convention, which is also adopted by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Including Trade in Counterfeit Goods (TRIPS), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the European Community (EC), is an artifact of an era when markets were circumscribed by national borders and granting a monopoly on a trademark in one country on the basis of its use in another was unreasonable because the likelihood of confusion was minimal. Today, however, the trademark originator's intent to expand beyond its original market should be presumed. …
Authors' Moral Rights In Non-European Nations: International Agreements, Economics, Mannu Bhandari, And The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jeffrey M. Dine
Authors' Moral Rights In Non-European Nations: International Agreements, Economics, Mannu Bhandari, And The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jeffrey M. Dine
Michigan Journal of International Law
This note undertakes to examine authors' moral rights in non-European countries. Section I will provide a brief comparative description of moral rights. Section II will discuss the treatment of moral rights in the Berne convention and the TRIPS agreement. Section III will then examine moral rights law in India and Israel, and two important cases from these nations, Mannu Bhandari v. Kala Vikas Pictures from India, and Qimron v. Shanks, from Israel. Mannu Bhandari deals with an author's moral right in the film adaptation of her work, Qimron with the moral rights of a scholar in the reconstruction of one …
Protecting Biodiversity: Recognizing International Intellectual Property Rights In Plant Genetic Resources, Rebecca L. Margulies
Protecting Biodiversity: Recognizing International Intellectual Property Rights In Plant Genetic Resources, Rebecca L. Margulies
Michigan Journal of International Law
Accelerating deforestation in many tropical countries with the concomitant loss of plant species diversity incites increasing international concern. Until very recently, international environmental law tended to regard natural plant species as a "common heritage," a universal resource immune to private property claims. This common heritage approach to the problem of biodiversity loss has left the majority of plant species in a jurisprudential void, unprotected by property rights and subject to conflicting claims by countries with divergent goals. Unrelieved economic pressures force impoverished peoples in species-rich developing nations to resort to activities that ravage the forests, and the tragedy of biodiversity …
U.S.-Thailand Trade Disputes: Applying Section 301 To Cigarettes And Itellectual Property, Ted L. Mcdorman
U.S.-Thailand Trade Disputes: Applying Section 301 To Cigarettes And Itellectual Property, Ted L. Mcdorman
Michigan Journal of International Law
Irrespective of the close economic and strategic relationship between Thailand and the United States, the United States has utilized Section 301 (and Special 301), and the consequent threat of trade retaliation, in its relations with the Land of Smiles. The purpose of this article is to examine the operation of Section 301 and Special 301 regarding trade in cigarettes and intellectual property.