This book is the first study to examine the issue of the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods under the most important legal systems on an international level, namely under GATT/WTO law, EU law and the laws of the ten major trading partners of the European Union. Part I consists of a general approach to the phenomenon of parallel importation and of a presentation of the theories that have been suggested to resolve the above-mentioned issue. The rule of exhaustion of rights, of which there are three types (rule of national, regional and international exhaustion of rights), is proposed as the most effective instrument to deal with the issue in question. Part II examines the question of exhaustion of trademark rights in light of the provisions of GATT/WTO Law. Part III analyzes the elements of the EU provisions on exhaustion of trademark rights (Articles 7 of Directive 2008/95/EC and 13 of Regulation (EC) 207/2009) and some specific issues relating to the application of these provisions. Part IV presents the regimes of exhaustion of trademark rights recognized in the European Union's current ten most significant trading partners. The book is the first legal study to welcome, in light of economic analysis, the approach adopted by GATT/WTO law and EU law to the question of the geographical scope of the exhaustion of the trademark rights rule. It includes all the case law developed on an international level on the issue of the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods and a comprehensive overview of the scientific literature concerning the phenomenon of parallel imports in general and the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods. All the views expressed in the book are based on the European Court of Justice's most recent case law and that of the courts of the most important trading partners of the European Union.

The primary purpose of a patent law system should be to enhance economic efficiency, in particular by providing incentives for making inventions. The conventional wisdom is that patents should therefore be strictly exclusive rights. Moreover, in practice patent owners are almost never forced to give up their right to exclude others and receive only a certain amount of remuneration with, for instance, compulsory licensing. Other economically interesting patent-law objectives, however, include the transfer and dissemination of knowledge. Mechanisms exist by which the patent owner decides if he or she would prefer exclusive or non-exclusive rights, for instance the opportunity to declare the willingness to license and create patent pools. But it is questionable whether these mechanisms are sufficient and efficient enough in view of the existence of patent trolls and other problems. This work challenges the conventional wisdom to a certain extent and makes proposals for improvements.

This book addresses two countervailing challenges to theory and policy in law and economics. The first is the rise of legal origins theory, which denies the comparative law view of convergence between common law and civil law by the assertion of an economic superiority of common law. The second is the series of economic crises in the very financial markets on which that assertion was based. Both trends unsettled certainties about the rule of law and institutional economics. Meeting legal origins theory in its main areas of political science, sociology and economics, the book extends the interdisciplinary reach to neglected aspects of comparative law, legal history, dynamic econometric analysis and "quasi-natural experiments" with counterfactual evidence of different institutional regimes in divided countries. These combined methodological tools make tests of the economic impact of different legal origins much more reliable. This is shown for developed and newly industrialized countries as well as developing, transforming and emerging countries with or without financial center advantage, affected or not by financial crises. The Asian financial crises and the American subprime crisis have been, or could have been resolved using the resources of common law or civil law. These cases and data on access to justice in Africa, Asia and Latin America reveal the problem of substantive law remaining "law on the books" without efficient procedural rules and judicial structures. The single most striking common law-civil law divide is that lawyer-dominated common law procedure is slower and costlier than judge-managed civil law procedure. Countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Japan, and China show functional interaction between culture and law in legal reforms. Such interaction can reduce the occurrence of legal disputes as well as facilitate their resolution. It can use economic crises as catalysts for legal reforms or rely on regional integration, and it should replace the discredited method of legal "transplants" by sustained dialogue between legal advisors and all actors involved in legal reforms.

The importance of international maritime labour law - both as a component of - ternational maritime law, and in socio-political and economic terms - has been recognised by the IMO International Maritime Law Institute for a number of years. Indeed, the Institute has annually organised a course on maritime labour law with the participation of inter alia the International Maritime Organization, the - ternational Labour Organization, the International Transport Workers' Federation, and the German Shipowners' Association. It was therefore a great pleasure when the authors invited me to introduce their forthcoming monograph on Maritime Work Law Fundamentals: Responsible S- powners Reliable Seafarers. As the title suggests, a fundamental challenge of this branch of international maritime law is to achieve a balance between the interests of the two main stakeholders. Institutionally, the effort to achieve this balance dates back a number of decades with its genesis mainly found in the work of the International Labour Organization. It has to be said that whilst this effort achieved great progress, it has led to a haphazard, plethora of legal instruments.

This book focuses on the analysis of liability rules of tort law from an efficiency perspective, presenting a comprehensive analysis of these rules in a self-contained and rigorous yet accessible manner. It establishes general results on the efficiency of liability rules, including complete characterizations of efficient liability rules and efficient incremental liability rules. The book also establishes that the untaken precaution approach and decoupled liability are incompatible with efficiency. The economic analysis of tort law has established that for efficiency it is necessary that each party to the interaction must be made to internalize the harm resulting from the interaction. The characterization and impossibility theorems presented in this book establish that, in addition to internalization of the harm by each party, there are two additional requirements for efficiency. Firstly, rules must be immune from strategic manipulation. Secondly, rules must entail closure with respect to the parties involved in the interaction giving rise to the negative externality, i.e., the liability must not be decoupled.

The present book examines both theoretical and practical aspects of the law on indications of geographical origin (IGOs) within the framework of European Union (EU) law, pursuing four distinct yet mutually related aims. First, it discusses theoretical issues of the law on IGOs including its historical foundations, terminology, principles of regulation, legal subjectivity, protection models and loss of protection. Second, it covers the EU law on IGOs from a systematic point of view. Particularly, the systematic review of the EU law on IGOs includes an in-depth analysis of and commentary on the relevant and applicable regulations. Third, it examines current legislative initiatives and further development options for the EU law on IGOs. Finally, it reveals the interrelation of the EU law on one hand and the national laws of EU Member States on the other with regard to IGOs, focusing on harmonized and non-harmonized areas of law.

This book introduces the fundamental monetary law problems of cross-border economic activity and the solutions thereto in international monetary law, and in EU law. After decades of having been neglected by legal scholars, international and European monetary law has attracted increasing attention in recent years. With the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), a full-fledged monetary union between sovereign States has been established for the first time in history. Its construction is primarily a work of law, with the Treaties on European Union (TEU) and on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) together with a number of protocols forming the constitutional basis. Yet, European monetary Integration has never taken place in isolation from international developments. Moreover, international monetary law, namely the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has always played a role - initially as the external monetary addition to the internal market project, after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System in the 1970s as one of the major driving forces for monetary Integration within the EU. On a fundamental basis, international and European monetary law address the same principled problems of monetary cooperation: how to proceed with financial transactions cross-border where no global currency exists. The present work describes the different approaches and relations and interplay between the two legal regimes.

This book provides a new analytical framework for legal problems concerning the economic order of the European Union. In order to determine the remaining scope for national economic sovereignty, and the improvement of the economic order of the Community itself, the focus of the book is the contentious relationship between competition and industrial policy under European law. The theoretical perspective used is based on a comparison between the concepts of the Treaty as an economic constitution and as a political constitution. On this basis, the convergence of competition and industrial policy at the Community level is explained as the result of the rationalisation of public policy, and the reduction of the economic independence of the member states. The study concludes that the market orientation of the European Union is not in doubt, but that a clear link remains to be established between the legitimacy of public intervention in the economy and the distribution of power in the Community system.

'As business spreads across the world, but jurisdictions remain essentially national, means must be found whereby business may effectively regulate itself and be regulated for public benefit. This important book addresses these issues, at theoretical and practical levels, explaining important sectoral examples and with deeper analysis. It is both timely and important, and provokes ideas for actions that should be taken at both transnational and national levels. The range of issues covered is rich and impressive.' - Christopher Hodges, Oxford University, UK and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 'Globalization pushes the boundaries of markets. Alongside the greater ''goods'' of transnational economic activity come the ''bads'' of unregulated conduct. This important book looks to the new frontiers of legal intervention to make sure that global markets do not run riot over important public values. The signal contribution is not the search for ever higher levels of transnational authority - the superstates of a brave new world - but empowering numerous private actors to enforce legal norms in our fast-changing economic environment.' - Samuel Issacharoff, New York University, School of Law, US This book addresses the different mechanisms of enforcement deployed in transnational private regimes vis-a-vis those in the field of public transnational law. Enforcement represents a key dimension in measuring the effectiveness and legitimacy of transnational private regulation. This detailed book shifts the focus from rule-making to enforcement and compliance, and moves from a vertical analysis to a comparative sectoral analysis. Both public and private transnational regulation fall under the scrutiny of the authors, and the book considers the effectiveness of judicial models of enforcement - under international law and through national courts - and of non-judicial means. Comparisons are drawn across sectors including international commercial law, labor law, finance, Internet regulation and advertising. Enforcement of Transnational Regulation will appeal to scholars of both private and public law, regulation and comparative law. It will also prove a stimulating and challenging read for policy makers and law makers. Contributors: E. Benvenisti, F. Cafaggi, F. Casarosa, S. Cassese, E. D'Alterio, K.E. Davis, M. De Bellis, G.W. Downs, C. Estlund, F. Francioni, G.P. Miller, E.-U. Petersmann, C. Scott, R. Stewart, P. Verbruggen

In an era of increased reliance on private regulatory bodies and globalised economic activity, standardisation is the field where politics, technical expertise and strategic behaviour meet and interact. International standard-setting bodies exemplify the rise of transnational governance and the challenges that it brings about relating to institutional choice, legitimacy, procedural and substantive fairness or transparency. This book takes a more empirical-based approach focusing on the mechanics of international standard-setting. It constitutes a multidisciplinary inquiry into the foundations of international standard-setting, an empirically under-researched yet important area of international informal lawmaking. Contributors expertly examine the peculiarities of international standardisation in selected issue-areas and legal orders and shed light on the attributes of international standard-setters, allowing comparisons among standard-setting bodies with a view to identifying best practices and improve our understanding about standardisation processes.

One of the primary functions of law is to ensure that the legal structure governing all social relations is predictable, coherent, consistent and applicable. Taken together, these characteristics of law are referred to as legal certainty. In traditional approaches to legal certainty, law is regarded as a hierarchical system of rules characterized by stability, clarity, uniformity, calculable enforcement, publicity and predictability. However, the current reality is that national legal systems no longer operate in isolation, but within a multilevel legal order, wherein norms created at both the international and regional level are directly applicable to national legal systems. Also, norm creation is no longer the exclusive prerogative of public officials of the state: private actors have an increasing influence on norm creation as well. Social scientists have referred to this phenomenon of interacting and overlapping competences as multilevel governance. Only recently have legal scholars focused attention on the increasing interconnectedness (and therefore the concomitant loss of primacy of national legal orders) between the global, European and national regulatory spheres through the concept of multilevel regulation. In this project the author uses multilevel regulation as a term to characterize a regulatory space in which the process of rule making, rule enforcement and rule adjudication (the regulatory lifecycle) is dispersed across more than one administrative or territorial level and amongst several different actors, both public and private. The author draws on the concept of a regulatory space, using it as a framing device to differentiate between specific aspects of policy fields. The relationship between actors in such a space is non-hierarchical and they may be independent of each other. The lack of central ordering of the regulatory lifecycle within this regulatory space is the most important feature of such a space. The implications of multilevel regulation for the notion of legal certainty have attracted limited attention from scholars and the demand for legal certainty in regulatory practice is still a puzzle. The book explores the idea of legal certainty in terms of the perceptions and expectations of regulatees in the context of medical products – specifically, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, which can be differentiated as two regulatory spaces and therefore form two case studies. As an exploratory project, the book necessarily explores new territory in terms of investigating legal certainty first in terms of regulatee perceptions and expectations and second, because it studies it in the context of multilevel regulation.

This book is a major work that focuses exclusively on ship finance and includes contributions on the increasingly complex field of ship finance, which has over the last two decades become a key aspect in the world of shipping and ship owning. The book offers an enlightening mix of theoretical analysis and well-founded practical insights into the daily markets. Given that ship finance continues to develop dynamically around the world, the book covers subjects ranging from the German KG market to Islamic Finance, from loans to legal aspects and from asset pricing to risk management.

The treatment of foreign investors and of their investments on the territory of a host State is often subject to a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) signed by the national State of the investors and the host State. These BITs usually contain a clause in which the two States offer fair and equitable treatment (FET) to the foreign investors on their territory. Moreover, this clause has become a norm of customary law, implying that investors may rely on it even outside the context of the BIT. Foreign investors whose rights under this clause have not been respected may bring the State in front of an international tribunal. This book analyses not only the conventional and customary framework se the FET clause but also its scope and all its applications in the existing case law. This book tackles the standard of fair and equitable treatment by applying four conceptual frames: the legal basis of FET, its nature as a standard, its content and finally the implications of its breach. The first two chapters explore the two classical sources of international law as possible sources for FET. The main sources of FET lie in a rich conventional framework, mainly bilateral and regional. Yet the high number of BITs does not appear to offer a uniform model of FET clauses, quite the opposite; the book offers a classification of the FET clauses found in more than 400 BITs. Having concluded that the conventional framework is essential to FET, the book turns to the examination of the possible customary character of FET and argues that the view equating FET with the International Minimum Standard is erroneous and it limits the scope of FET. Alternatively, it suggests that the FET standard is an independent standard of customary nature. Then the book looks at the nature of FET, that of being a standard and retains three direct consequences for its meaning: its flexibility, the absence of a fixed content and its evolutionary character. With these three characteristics in mind, it proceeds to the third conceptual framework, the content of FET. Although no fixed content may be given to it, it identifies and develops each one of those situations in which the FET standard has already been applied. Finally, the last conceptual framework aims at discussing the final act of a FET claim, i.e. the amount of compensation awarded. It argues that FETis a standard which balances the interests and behaviours of both the States and the investors, at the stage of compensation.

This book aims to identify, analyze, and systematize the available research on counterfeiting and piracy published over a thirty-five year time span (1980-2015) in order to highlight the main trends in the illicit trade literature, propose suggestions for managers battling against illicit trade, and provide a starting point for future research. Counterfeiting and piracy, i.e., the violation of intellectual property rights (IPRs), including trademarks, copyright, and patents, have been investigated across a multitude of fields, from ethics to marketing, from law to business, from criminology to psychology. While the number of contributions has been substantial, research on both demand and supply has been fragmented and has at times yielded contradictory results. In addition, the lack of an extensive, interdisciplinary, and up-to-date literature review has made it hard to fully understand what aspects of the phenomenon need further clarification in order to stem consumer demand and provide meaningful suggestions to companies combatting illicit trade daily. A systematization of the existing literature is absolutely paramount and this need is fully met by this book.

This work focuses on a specific aspect of the enforcement of maritime claims, namely judicial sales of ships, a procedure creditors typically resort to in the event of an irreversible default situation. A substantial part of the book approaches the topic from a comparative perspective, the goal being to assess the similarities and differences of the judicial sale procedure between three specific jurisdictions: Belgium, the Netherlands, and England & Wales. In this study, the comparison is used to further analyse the impacts of these differences on the effectiveness and reliability of the judicial sale procedure in each jurisdiction and also forms the basis for assessing the feasibility of harmonising judicial sale procedures and fostering their acceptance. Considering the international character typical of judicial sales of ships, conflict-of-law questions are very likely to arise during these procedures. Accordingly, the comparative study, where appropriate, is viewed against a private international law background.

Trade policy has played a vital role in the decline of European electronics business. The events that resulted in the disappearance of the European television industry, of a European and Japanese video recorder format and of other European consumer electronics are directly related to market structures in exporting countries and business practices. In this book, factual business data shows and economic models explain how restrictive trade practices result in elimination of efficient competitors in export markets. It deals with the memorable case how a videocassette recorder format was established by dumping and how politics enabled it. An innovative tariff increase for CD players was invalidated by heavy dumping, causing closure of production in Europe. European CTV industry succumbed under permanent dumping and a series of biases - as the interest of a state-owned company - and serious errors making trade instruments void and rules irreconcilable with international agreements. Practical and theoretical examples and explanations, some in detail, of trade rules are provided. The book sketches events - carelessness, prejudice or special interests, arbitrary and false application of trade instruments and fraud - resulting in disappearance of various European electronics business segments.

The Fund Reporting Cloud (R) has made tax reporting less complex, but comparing the effective tax treatment of investment funds and their investors in an international environment is still an ambitious task. Against this background, this study examines the tax consequences at fund, asset, and investor level. In geographical terms our comparison covers eleven European countries, the USA, and Japan. Our analysis of the relevant tax provisions, which is of a primarily qualitative nature, is complemented by a quantitative comparison of the tax burden for a model investor investing assets nationally in the form of a collective investment. It will be of interest both for investors seeking tax advantages and for governments to check whether there is a need for tax reforms. It also ties in perfectly with the current evaluations at OECD level in the context of TRACE.

This thesis presents a significant contribution to decentralized resource allocation problems with strategic agents. The study focused on three classes of problems arising in communication networks. (C1). Unicast service provisioning in wired networks. (C2). Multi-rate multicast service provisioning in wired networks. (C3). Power allocation and spectrum sharing in multi-user multi-channel wireless communication systems. Problems in (C1) are market problems; problems in (C2) are a combination of markets and public goods; problems in (C3) are public goods. Dr. Kakhbod developed game forms/mechanisms for unicast and multi-rate multicast service provisioning that possess specific properties. First, the allocations corresponding to all Nash equilibria (NE) of the games induced by the mechanisms are optimal solutions of the corresponding centralized allocation problems, where the objective is the maximization of the sum of the agents' utilities. Second, the strategic agents voluntarily participate in the allocation process. Third, the budget is balanced at the allocations corresponding to all NE of the game induced by the mechanism as well as at all other feasible allocations. For the power allocation and spectrum sharing problem, he developed a game form that possesses the second and third properties as detailed above along with a fourth property: the allocations corresponding to all NE of the game induced by the mechanism are Pareto optimal. The thesis contributes to the state of the art of mechanism design theory. In particular, designing efficient mechanisms for the class of problems that are a combination of markets and public goods, for the first time, have been addressed in this thesis. The exposition, although highly rigorous and technical, is elegant and insightful which makes this thesis work easily accessible to those just entering this field and will also be much appreciated by experts in the field.

Part one of Volume 4 (2013) of the European Yearbook of International Economic Law offers a special focus on recent developments in international competition policy and law. International competition law has only begun to emerge as a distinct subfield of international economic law in recent years, even though international agreements on competition co-operation date back to the 1970s. Competition law became a prominent subject of political and academic debates in the late 1990s when competition and trade were discussed as one of the Singapore issues in the WTO. Today, international competition law is a complex and multi-layered system of rules and principles encompassing not only the external application of domestic competition law and traditional bilateral co-operation agreements, but also competition provisions in regional trade agreements and non-binding guidelines and standards. Furthermore, the relevance of competition law for developing countries and the relationship between competition law and public services are the subject of heated debates. The contributions to this volume reflect the growing diversity of the issues and elements of international competition law. Part two presents analytical reports on the developments of the regional integration processes in North America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia as well as on the treaty practice of the European Union. Part three covers the legal and political developments in major international organizations that deal with international economic law, namely the IMF, WCO, WTO, WIPO, ICSID and UNCTAD. Lastly, part four offers book reviews of recent works in the field of international economic law.

This insightful and accessible introduction provides students and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important discipline of international investment law. Focusing primarily on the legal principles contained in the growing body of international investment agreements, this book covers the core concepts of the discipline, with attention given to their relation to each other and to the manner which they have developed through arbitration case law. The context of each legal principle is explored, along with a consideration of some of the major debates and emerging criticisms. Avoiding extensive case extracts, this book adopts an engaging and succinct narrative style which allows readers to advance their understanding of the topic while examining the legal principles with academic rigour and discerning commentary.

The People's Republic of China's tax policies and international obligations are as multifaceted and dynamic as they are complex, developing closely with the nation's rise to the world's fastest-growing major economy. Today, after decades of reform and the entry into the World Trade Organization, China has developed regulatory systems that enable it to provide stable administration, including a tax structure. China's main tax reform can be attributed to the enactment of the Enterprise Income Tax Law, which came into effect on January 1, 2008. Chinese tax regulations include direct taxes, indirect taxes, other taxes, and custom duties and from a collection point of view, China's tax administration adopts a very devolved system, with revenue collected and shared between different levels of government in accordance with contracts between the different levels of the tax administration system. With respect to international treaties, China has established a network of bilateral tax treaties and regional free trade agreements. This publication describes in detail China's complex tax system and policies, as well as major bilateral treaties in which China has entered into using country-by-country analysis. Lorenzo Riccardi is Tax Advisor and Certified Public Accountant specialized in international taxation. He is based in Shanghai, where he focuses on business and tax law, assisting foreign investments in East Asia. He is an auditor and an advisor for several corporate groups and he is partner and Head of Tax of the consulting firm GWA, specializing in emerging markets.

'In the galaxy of issues that developing countries are faced with in their international economic relations, this publication manages to focus on some critical areas of particular concern to developing countries. Moreover, the issues focussed on have a contemporary relevance touching as they do on financial reform, aid and IMF conditionality, international trade and investment, multinational corporations, competition, corruption, the environment and intellectual property issues. This is a comprehensive appraisal of development related problems in international economic relations written by practitioners and academics in the field.' - Asif Qureshi, University of Manchester, UK International Economic Law, Globalization and Developing Countries explores the impact of globalization on the international legal system, with a special focus on the implications for developing countries. The onset of the current process of globalization has brought about momentous changes to the rules and processes of international law. This comprehensive book examines a number of these changes, including the radical expansion of international economic law, the increase in the power of international economic organizations, and the new informal approaches to law-making. The greater reliance on judicial and arbitral mechanisms, and the proliferation of international human rights instruments, many of which have a direct bearing on international economic relations, are also discussed. The contributors to this book are all prominent experts in the fields of international law and international political economy, drawn from both developing and developed countries. This insightful book will appeal to scholars and advanced students with an interest in international law, development studies, international political economy and international governance. It will also be an indispensable tool for practitioners - including members of leading international NGOs, international lawyers, political scientists and international development specialists. Contributors: Y. Akyuz, D. Bradlow, E.R. Carrasco, P. Cullet, K.E. Davis, J. Faundez, M.E. Footer, J. Harrison, F. Macmillan, K. McMahon, P. Muchlinski, T. Novitz, P. Roffe, D. Salter, C. Tan, V.P.B. Yu III

The institutional and legal status of the WTO, with its integrated dispute settlement system, provides a framework for certainty, security and stability for trade as well as a coherent system to protect intellectual property rights. In all member countries and their respective enterprises, WTO regulations need to be considered when designing and implementing trade-related strategies for business operations in the integrated global market. This book aims at giving upper-level undergraduates and graduate students a comprehensive understanding of the public regulations related to international trade within the WTO mechanism and equip them, as potential policy makers and future practitioners in international trade, with the practical skills to interpret and apply the multilateral trade regulations as outlined by the WTO.

Counterfeit products represent a growing problem for a wide range of industries. There are many estimates of the size of this problem most of which coalesce around $500-billion annually on a global basis. Overall, a wide range of industries agree that there is a severe problem with the global protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), yet, there have been virtually no attempts to describe all aspects of the problem. This book aims at giving the most complete description of various characteristics of the intellectual property rights (IPR) environment in a global context. The authors believe a holistic understanding of the problem must include consumer complicity to purchase counterfeit, actions of the counterfeiters (pirates) as well as actions (or inaction) by home and host governments, and the role of international organizations and industry alliances. Only after establishing how all the actors in the IPR environment relate to one another can we describe global protection of the intellectual property rights environment and the managerial response of IPR owners and/or industry associations to combat this ongoing problem. The book concludes with pragmatic recommendations for protecting intellectual property given the recent trends discussed in the previous chapters, making it of interest to practitioners and policy-makers alike.

The primary contribution of this book is to integrate the important disciplines which simultaneously impact the investment appraisal process. The book presents a study that develops a new approach to investment appraisal which uses a multiple objective linear programming (MOLP) model to integrate the selected disciplines which include capital markets, corporate governance and capital budgeting. The research covers two case studies, one in the e-commerce sector and another in the airline industry in which the above disciplines are integrated. Readers from the areas of corporate governance, regulation, and accounting would find the survey of different approaches and the new integrated optimization approach particularly useful.