International Trade Law Commons^™

Securing Patent Law, Charles Duan

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A vigorous conversation about intellectual property rights and national security has largely focused on the defense role of those rights, as tools for responding to acts of foreign infringement. But intellectual property, and patents in particular, also play an arguably more important offense role. Foreign competitor nations can obtain and assert U.S. patents against U.S. firms and creators. Use of patents as an offense strategy can be strategically coordinated to stymie domestic innovation and technological progress. This Essay considers current and possible future practices of patent exploitation in this offense setting, with a particular focus on China given the nature …

The Wto As A Forum For Regulatory Cooperation: Transparency And Open Plurilateral Agreements, Padideh Ala'i

Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

100 Years Of International Ip - Reflections On Past, Present And Future, Frederick M. Abbott

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article reflects on the past 100 years of international intellectual property (IP) law, highlighting its evolution from regional agreements to global systems like the TRIPS Agreement. It emphasizes that IP rights are shaped by human policies and societal needs, not inherent qualities, making them adaptable. Current challenges include balancing IP protection with public access, addressing cybercrime, and grappling with AI-generated works.

The Next 100 Years Of International Intellectual Property: Integrating Human Rights And Corporate Social Responsibility, Julia Janewa Osei-Tutu

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article predicts that international intellectual property (IP) law will increasingly integrate human rights and corporate social responsibility (CSR) into its framework over the next century. This shift reflects a broader trend of balancing IP protection with societal concerns, such as public health, cultural heritage, and human development. The author argues that while the TRIPS Agreement established minimum IP standards, future agreements will prioritize equitable access to knowledge, medicines, and traditional knowledge, aligning IP law with global sustainability and human rights goals.

Three Megatrends In The International Intellectual Property Regime, Peter K. Yu

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The international intellectual property (IP) regime has undergone significant transformation over the past century, shaped by three key megatrends: the rise of emerging countries, the increasing complexity of the regime, and spatial transformation driven by new technologies. These trends have reshaped the regime's standards, policies, and challenges, with profound implications for global economic and social welfare. The article critiques the regime's historical bias toward developed nations and its overemphasis on trade interests, advocating for a balanced approach that integrates public welfare and human rights considerations. It concludes that the regime's growing complexity necessitates new institutional frameworks and vocabularies to address …

The Values-Based Trade Agenda, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Michelle Egan

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

With the increasing trade tensions between the United States and China, pressures created by Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most trade scholars have focused on rising protectionism exhibited through defensive strategies such as tariffs and export controls. However, this focus ignores the fundamental shift in international trade goals of the United States and the European Union towards a values-based trade agenda.

Instead of merely focusing on free trade based on efficiency and market access, trade regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have independently pursued measures designed to address environmental sustainability and social equity. These policies resonate with their domestic …

Swimming Against The Tide? The Arbitration Of International Tax Disputes, Chris Noonan

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

This article examines the evolution and increasing acceptance of mandatory binding arbitration in resolving international tax disputes, particularly in the context of the OECD/G20 Two-Pillar Solution (TPS). Traditionally resisted by many states due to concerns about sovereignty, cost, and expertise, international tax arbitration has gained traction among developed countries, driven by corporate lobbying and a growing need to address disputes arising from globalized and digital economies. The TPS introduces a multilateral framework that significantly expands taxpayer-initiated arbitration, particularly for resolving disputes related to "Amount A" taxation under Pillar One. The article contrasts this development with the decline in state consent …

Asymmetric Challenges In Cybersecurity Among Wto Members : A Justification For A Veiled Trade Barrier?, Daniel Oluwadayo Akindipe, Love Gbenga-Fabusiwa

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

There is a higher prevalence of cyberattacks amongst the least developed and the developing country members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) than its developed country members. To proffer appropriate safeguards against cyberthreats, developed country members are adopting solutions outside of the WTO with Preferential Trade Agreements that specifically make provision on cybersecurity. Normative doctrinal research methodology was used in this research to analyze applicable legislation and rules that are applicable to the WTO members in the area of cybersecurity. The study revealed that the WTO does not have adequate provisions regarding the cybersecurity challenges of its least developed and …

The Appellate Body Crisis: Consent Within The Dispute Settlement Body Of The World Trade Organisation, Diana María Beltrán-Vargas, Mariana Puentes-Jaramillo, Pablo Andrés Aponte-González, Maria Alexandra Ortíz-Cabrera

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Pasha L. Hsieh, New Asian Regionalism In International Economic Law, Cambridge University Press 2022, Junji Nakagawa

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

No abstract provided.

Regulating Subsidies Contributing To Overcapacity And Overfishing: How India Proposes To Align Trade Policy With Sustainable Fisheries, Pallavi Arora, Ketakee Gondane, Mumrita Gaurdwaj

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

In light of the growing impetus to integrate sustainability issues into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), facilitating coordination between the trade and sustainability regimes has taken centre stage. Managing regime interaction was integral to negotiating the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS), the WTO’s first sustainability agreement. As the outstanding element of the AFS, the overcapacity and overfishing (OCOF) pillar also aims to foster harmony between the principles and concepts of international environmental law, particularly fisheries law and international trade law. Notable in this regard are the principles of sustainable development and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Also relevant …

Industry Groups In International Governance: A Framework For Reform, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights encourage engaging with businesses as partners in important global governance agendas. Indeed, many international organizations are now partnering with business groups to secure funding and private sector engagement. At the same time, reforms at the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization and others seek to restrain the dangers of mission distortion and capture by business groups. Shareholders at major multinational oil and gas companies also recognize these dangers and seek to rein in lobbying that is at odds with the goals of the Paris Climate …

Privatizing International Governance, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

Public-private partnerships of all kinds are increasingly common in the international system. Since United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s launch of the Global Compact in 2000, the United Nations has increasingly opened up to business entities. Now, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Compact, and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all encourage engaging with business entities as partners in developing and executing global governance agendas. These partnerships are seen by some as indispensable to sustainable development, international business regulation, climate change mitigation, and other global governance agendas. At the same time, UN climate change bodies have been criticized …

Incomplete Contracts And Future Data Usage, Jens Frankenreiter, Talia B. Gillis, Dan Svirsky

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most major jurisdictions require websites to provide customers with privacy policies. For consumers, a privacy policy's most important function is to provide them with a description of the online service provider's current privacy practices. We argue that these policies also serve a second, often-overlooked function: they allocate residual data usage rights to online services or consumers, including the power to decide whether a service can modify its privacy practices and use consumer data in novel ways. We further argue that a central feature of the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching privacy regulatory …

Enforcing Soft Law In International Investment Arbitration, Vera Korzun

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Drawing examples from international environmental law, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility, this Article examines the evolving role of international investment arbitration in the enforcement of non-binding soft law rules of international law. In doing so, the Article explains how investment tribunals can, and have been called upon to, interpret and, paradoxically, enforce soft law instruments. The Article calls for reevaluation of the nature of soft law and the role of investor-state dispute settlement in international rulemaking and enforcement. It also argues that for international environmental law and law on sustainable development, where the lack of an enforcement mechanism has …

China In The Wto Twenty Years On: How To Mend A Broken Relationship?, Petros C. Mavroidis, André Sapir

Faculty Scholarship

China’s participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been a rollercoaster of milestones and frictions. China has emerged as a leading trading nation, which has contributed to the expansion of world trade. Some of its trading partners, however, and most vocally the United States, complain that China has reached its new status by eluding its WTO commitments. Under President Trump, the United States reacted strongly against China, almost bringing the WTO(but not China!) to its knees. These actions have been criticized in different ways: Some underline their unilateral character (and the ensuing legal issues they raise), whereas others focus …

International Investment Law And Climate Justice: The Search For A Just Green Investment Order, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Adebayo Majekolagbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Efforts are underway to craft responses to the climate crisis within the international investment order. This Article highlights international investment law (“IIL”) and international climate law (“ICL”) as two basic governance contexts within which investment- related responses to climate change are being designed. There is, however, a multilevel—normative and institutional—dissonance between both regimes that makes for an asymmetric integration of the regimes at best, or worse still, the escalation of the injustices which have characterized both. While similar in their recognition of international investment as an important tool for responding to climate change, assumptions and approaches under both regimes are …

Race & International Investment Law: On The Possibility Of Reform And Non-Retrenchment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The international investment regime is in flux. The mainstream practice of investment law and arbitration works on the basis of the regime’s foundations in contract and property law. However, critical scholarship in the field has unearthed the coloniality of power that permeates both the practice of international investment law and the current reform exercise led by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III. These critical scholars warn of the imminent reproduction and entrenchment of the systemic inequities, power asymmetries, and investment law’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime which is skewed against post-colonial host states. The …

Covid-19 And Investor-State Disputes: Have The Stars Aligned For Mediation?, Mark Mclaughlin

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the global pandemic, governments have compelled the production of ventilators, limited service provision to “essential” goods, suspended bills for electricity, gas and water, and implemented price and export controls. Regulatory measures have consciously inhibited economic activity and disrupted investment interests. Inevitably, foreign investors are among those adversely affected by measures directed towards the containment of COVID-19. Since the first bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”) was concluded in 1959, international investment agreements (“IIAs”) have served as derogations to the general international law principle that States have absolute discretion to restrict and regulate foreign investors within their territories.2 As such, …

What Role For The Wto In Disciplining China’S State-Dominated Economy?, Jennifer A. Hillman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Is the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its rules-based system capable of addressing the distortions in trade caused by the explosive growth of China’s State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs)? If it is, why hasn’t it been put to use? If the WTO rules are not up to task, where and how do they need to be changed? Those are the questions that Henry Gao and Weihuan Zhou answer in their thorough and compelling assessment of the current state of China’s SOEs, the commitments China made when it joined the WTO and the relevance of the applicable WTO rules, Between Market Economy and …

International Investment Law In The Shadow Of Populism: Between Redomestication And Liberalism Re‐Embedded, Alvaro Santos

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The international investment regime is in crisis, nowhere more so than in regard to the investor–state dispute settlement system. While several developing countries have been critical of the system for some time, rich countries like the US and EU states—once the principal promoters of this regime—are now acknowledging problems and advancing reforms. This change of position has been fueled by the mobilization of civil society and the emergence of domestic populist movements on both the right and the left, reflecting widespread discontent with the past three decades of neoliberal globalization and its effects on job losses, lower wages, and increasing …

Gender Mainstreaming In Trade Agreements: "A Potemkin Façade"?, Katrin Kuhlmann, Amrita Bahri

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The distributional outcomes of trade agreements have historically been uneven, creating both “losers” as well as “winners” and benefitting certain stakeholders while leaving others without benefits or even with negative repercussions. In particular, distributional outcomes can vary between women and men, since they play different roles in society, markets, and economies, and they enjoy different opportunities as well. At times, and sometimes by their very nature, trade agreements can restrict opportunities for women and further increase the gender divide. But in recent years, there has been a drastic upsurge in the number of countries that are incorporating commitments on gender …

Privacy Peg, Trade Hole: Why We (Still) Shouldn’T Put Data Privacy In Trade Law, Margot E. Kaminski, Kristina Irion, Svetlana Yakovleva

Publications

No abstract provided.