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Simon Lester

"Is India undervaluing patents or is the rest of the world overvaluing them?"

Economist Arvind Subramanian comments on the Indian Supreme Court's Novartis ruling: Critics have suggested that India is a deviant for being the only country where Novartis’ claim has been rejected. Left out is the fact that even in the United States, the Novartis application—which was really for

Food Labelling: Can There Be Too Much Information?

A couple weeks ago, I asked the following question in relation to the U.S. COOL measure: "What will consumers think of seeing details on where the animal was 'born, raised, and slaughtered' on every package of meat?" CNN's Jake Tapper was intrigued by

Is This One of Those Regulatory Trade Barriers Everyone Is Talking About?

One of the big issues in the US-EU trade talks is supposedly going to be "regulatory trade barriers." Everyone agrees there are significant economic gains to be had by eliminating these barriers. And I can imagine there are. But one problem is, it is not really clear what

Novartis, the Indian Supreme Court, and TRIPS

The Washington Post reports on a big patent decision at the Indian Supreme Court: India’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Swiss pharmaceutical company’s effort to patent an updated version of its cancer drug, a decision aimed at boosting a domestic generic drug manufacturing industry that supplies cheap

Cybersecurity and Trade Conflict

Over at Opinio Juris, Roger Alford talks about some new U.S. cybersecurity legislation that bars federal government purchases of IT equipment “produced, manufactured or assembled” by entities “owned, directed, or subsidized by the People’s Republic of China” unless the head of the purchasing agency consults with the FBI

Is the Biggest Trade in Cigarettes Battle Still Looming?

There has been a lot of excitement in the area of trade in cigarettes in recent years. We've had the Clove Cigarettes case. The Australian Plain Packaging case is starting up, and might spread if others adopt plain packaging. Trade concerns have been raised about Canadian rules on

The Future of the Publishing Industry and International Price Discrimination

Following-up on Perry's excellent post about the Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., I just wanted to offer some brief thoughts. A couple months ago, I saw this post from economics blogger Tyler Cowen, titled "What does equilibrium look like for the

Perry Bechky on IEL at SCOTUS

This is a guest post by Perry S. Bechky, Visiting Scholar at Seattle University School of Law and Senior Attorney at Dorsey & Whitney LLP. If you buy a book (or other copyrighted work), where does your right to resell it end? Does the answer depend on whether the resale

Malawi's Statement on the EU Tobacco Products Directive

At the latest TBT Committee meeting, Malawi has offered a very interesting communication (G/TBT/W/360) related to the EU's proposed Tobacco Products Directive. In short, they think it violates various TBT Agreement provisions. They raise several aspects of the measure in particular: * the ingredients bans: There

Flett on the "Diagonal Vector Test"

James Flett of the European Commission has an interesting article in the latest JIEL issue, entitled "WTO Space for National Regulation: Requiem for a Diagonal Vector Test." His focus is on de facto violations of the national treatment obligation. When I first saw the article, I thought about