Simon Lester

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

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

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

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

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

This is from Canadian International Trade Minister Ed Fast, reacting to criticisms of the Canada - China investment treaty by opposition leader Tom Mulcair: “If he had actually read this treaty – which was tabled in the House of Commons almost six months ago – he would know that it will give Canadian

From the latest TBT Committee meeting: Several delegations ... raised new concerns regarding Chile's proposed amendments to its Food Health Regulations — which would place “STOP” signs on junk food. Pursuant to the amendment, certain categories of food would need to bear labels designated to inform and encourage consumers to

This is from GATT/WTO expert and trade lawyer Chris Parlin: Selling complete set of original GATT BISD's -- 2 initial volumes & all 42 annual supplements (1948-1994).  All GATT decisions – including dispute settlement reports, waivers and interpretations.  WTO reprint edition costs 1850 Swiss Francs.  Will sell for

I'm not sure whether any of the parties' submissions will be available in the Renewable Energy/Feed-In Tariff (DS412,426) appeal prior to the completion of the proceedings, but for those who are interested, here are two amicus submissions: -- from Professor Luca Rubini: http://www.worldtradelaw.