Tracing back to the Venetian patent law of the 1400s the motivation underlying the grant of the patent was to encourage inventorship and contribution to society. Today patents have become a financial commodity treated much as any other asset of a business. Despite the evolution of the social...

Integration may be viewed as an evolutionary outgrowth of heightened social and economic interdependence brought about by advances in technology. As persons, goods, capital, services and ideas cross artificial national frontiers at increased rates of speed, the wisdom of imposing disparate...

In 1970, the countries of the Andean Common Market (the Andean Pact or ANCOM), adopted uniform foreign investment regulations. The Andean Foreign Investment Code, as Decision 24 of the Andean Commission is called, regulates both the treatment of foreign capital entering or within ANCOM, and...

This paper was prepared by the author for the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. It was initially published in the online edition in 2009, and in 2012 appeared in the hard copy bound volumes. The paper describes the various forms of intellectual property, the international...

In the Doha Declaration WTO Members committed themselves to implementing and interpreting the TRIPS Agreement to allow full use of its flexibilities, and to promote access to medicines for all. In the Doha Declaration there was an express acknowledgment of the right of Members to grant...

Government trade ministers arrived at that the WTO Seattle Ministerial Conference in late November 1999 without preliminary agreement on the future course of multilateral trade negotiations, and they departed without reaching consensus on a new WTO agenda. There was ample warning that the WTO...

This essay concerns the fundamental principles that will guide congressional deliberations regarding trade policy in the coming months and years. There is no question but that Congress must respond effectively to progressive social demands, such as demands that the environment not be sacrificed...

The Maastricht Judgment of the German Constitutional Court has caused a considerable stir within the German legal community. The Judgment is perceived by some as a step backward in the European integration process, or at least as a halt, because it implies significant residual national...