This brief contribution looks at the challenges that the World Trade Organization (WTO) faces in times of sweeping digitization and the reality of data-driven economy. It examines paths of possible reform and legal adjustments.The entire essay series is available at: https://www.cigionline.org/wto

"The development of new digital technologies has resulted in significant transformations in daily life, from the arrival of online shopping to more fundamental changes in the ways we work and communicate. Many of these changes raise questions that transcend market access and liberalisation, and...

The chapter explores the far-reaching effects of the digital transformation on trade and trade law. It first sketches the state of affairs under the multilateral forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, second, analyzes the more de- liberate regulatory responses to the challenges of...

The contemporary intellectual property rights (IPR) system is not a simple, smoothly working block of rules but is complex and full of ambiguities, and as many argue, imperfections. Some deficits relate on the one hand to the inherent centrality of authorship, originality and mercantilism to the...

Data flows and global trade law / Mira Burri -- Data flow-related provisions in preferential trade agreements : trends and patterns of diffusion / Manfred Elsig and Sebastian Klotz -- The costs of data protectionism / Martina Ferracane -- WTO law and cross-border data flows : an unfinished...