Susan Aaronson has a short piece proposing some rethinking of intellectual property rights. She starts out with this: Rules governing intellectual property rights set the terms of access for users of knowledge, but the current system (which includes rigorous application of patent and copyright laws) can limit the supply of

Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute proposes a Mutilateral Investment Agreement (MIA) (not to be confused with the failed 1990s Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)).  I found his proposal intriguing because, as I read it, he may be making subtle suggestions about how to approach international investment issues in a

The prospect of a new WTO Director-General seems to have a lot of people thinking about the future of the WTO.  In the past few days, I've seen articles in the Guardian and Reuters, and also an FT op-ed by economist Arvind Subramanian. Subramanian thinks the problem with

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) is holding an Annual Symposium of the International Economic Law Interest Group (IELIG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) on Friday, 1 March 2013 at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne. This symposium is part

In the recent  panel reports relating to “ CANADA – CERTAIN MEASURES AFFECTING THE  RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION SECTOR” and “CANADA – MEASURES RELATING TO THE FEED-IN TARIFF PROGRAM” ,  the complainants ( namely,  the EU and Japan)  have asked the Panel not to limit its analysis to rejecting the benchmarks proposed by the parties,  and

Back in July, I blogged about how many WTO disputes there had been so far in 2012.  At this pace, I said, we will see 24 complaints in 2012.  As it turns out, I was pretty close, but actually underestimated the total.  The final tally is now in: 27 complaints

From a recent Columbia FDI Perspectives paper by Catharine Titi: ... it is time to start thinking about a new balance in a move away from investment treaties’ traditional laissez-faire liberalism toward WTO law’s embedded liberalism,[2] a model whereby liberalization is embedded within a wider framework that enables public

Law prof Wentong Zheng wants to replace anti-dumping and countervailing duties with a country-specific safeguard.  Here's the abstract of his paper: This article aims to restart the debate on trade remedies by offering new perspectives on the fundamental defects of the current trade remedy regime and by proposing

From the EU first written submission in Seal Products: 357. It is beyond question that the EU Seals Regime restricts trade to the extent that the General Ban provides for a prohibition, as a general rule, on the placing on the EU market of all seal products, whether domestic or

The TBT Agreement only applies to certain kinds of measures, including "technical regulations."  Is the Seal Products measure a technical regulation?  Here's the definition of technical regulation: Document which lays down product characteristics or their related processes and production methods, including the applicable administrative provisions, with