From a recent TRIPS Council meeting: Australia’s plain packaging bill for tobacco products The bill, first discussed in the last meeting, has passed the lower house and is now in the Senate, Australia reported. It is part Australia’s anti-smoking campaign. (See also this Australian government web page,

From the AP: Facebook will build a new server farm on the edge of the Arctic Circle — its first outside the U.S. — that will improve performance for European users of the social networking site, officials said Thursday. ... Facebook didn't give the price of its investment, but Lulea

I feel like much of the talk about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) relates to IP and health issues.  More interesting to me is the proposed (and recently leaked) "regulatory coherence" chapter.  Here's an excerpt: 1. Through its national coordinating body, process or mechanism, each Party,

From customs law blogger Larry Friedman, here is a brief summary of an interesting Section 337 case, Tianrui Group v. International Trade Commission: The underlying issue in this case is interesting for two reasons. First, it relates to trade secrets. Second, it relates to activity occurring entirely in China. The

A guest post from Henning Grosse Ruse - Khan: "The TRIPS Agreement is probably the only WTO Agreement which contains explicit textual expression of its object and purpose in its Articles 7 and 8. At the same time, it has a lot of provisions with (constructive) ambiguities where a treaty

Following up on the last post, I was curious about the reference to "WTO-legal subsidies and WTO-illegal subsidies."  So I asked the SolarWorld people the following question: In what way are the Chinese subsidies "WTO-illegal"? Does that mean that they  violate the SCM

Call  for Papers: March 2012 Symposium, International Economic Law Interest Group,  Australian and New Zealand Society of International  Law Following  the success of its inaugural symposium in February  2011,  the International Economic Law Interest Group of the Australian and New Zealand  Society of International Law (ANZSIL) is holding a research