Talks and seminars on intellectual property, domain names and arbitration.

Geographical indications had moved to the centre of bilateral negotiation: the European Union–China agreement had just entered into force, and talks with Australia were under way. The session asked what that protection means, legally and practically, inside the Union and in its Member States. With Nathalie Nathon (European Commission, DG AGRI) on European Union law and the GI View database, Marion Brunet-Pignot (Plasseraud IP) on French law, and Elio de Tullio (De Tullio and Partners) on Italian law.

The market for geographical indications protected by the European Union is worth close to 75 billion euros, more than a fifth of it exported outside the Union — value that attracts imitation. Two days on the protection of wine and spirits indications, with Julie Hervé and François Blanc (French embassy in Beijing) on the European Union–China bilateral agreement, Amandine Duthilleul (Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac) on defending the Cognac appellation, Fabrice Mattei (Rouse) on South-East Asia, and Michel Désilets and Guillaume Marchais, both members of the AIDV, on the legal tools available.

China and India then counted 650 and 475 million internet users. E-commerce was still a small share of either economy, but growing steeply — and counterfeits followed onto marketplaces and social media. As trade mark owners went to court, the case law grew more precise on identifying counterfeiters, on the obligations and liability of intermediaries, and on the calculation of damages. With Charles Feng (East Concord, Beijing) and Pravin Anand (Anand and Anand, New Delhi) reviewing the 2018 decisions in each country, and Doranne Lim (IP Twins) on detection, takedown and evidence gathering.

Intellectual property law and arbitration law were both converging, and arbitrability was widening. Was there a matching convergence on the arbitrability of intellectual property itself? Portugal offered a test case: law no. 62/2011 set up compulsory arbitration for disputes between generic manufacturers entering the market and the holders of the rights on reference medicines. That system raised the arbitrability of patent validity, the confidentiality of proceedings and awards, and the expertise and independence of the arbitrators. The paper maps the policies on patent arbitration and asks whether the Portuguese model can be exported.

A case study prepared for the Certificate in Becoming an Online Teacher: how the IRAC method used in legal writing maps onto Bloom’s taxonomy, and what quizzes and wikis actually achieve in a blended course in law.

Since intellectual property entered the WTO framework in 1995, registrations, international contracts and disputes have all risen together. Arbitration became the preferred route for international commercial disputes, and most jurisdictions moved to a broad reading of arbitrability — what some called the decline, or the death, of inarbitrability. The talk asks whether that convergence extends to intellectual property, where arbitration offers expertise, confidentiality, a neutral forum and awards enforceable worldwide.

Public order has taken an increasing part in the governance of the naming system since ICANN was created in 1998. The talk looks at the dispute resolution mechanisms designed to answer public order concerns raised by the liberalisation of top-level domains, with particular attention to the health-related extensions — .doctor, .health, .hospital, .med, .pharmacy.

Fifteen years after the UDRP was adopted, new top-level domains, internationalised domain names and IPv6 were about to make the naming space effectively endless. Meanwhile 70 % of WIPO cases ended in transfer to the complainant. Reading the UDRP case law alongside the rules of the ccTLD registries — mediation, appeal, reimbursement of fees, arbitration — shows a system that has already evolved, but in scattered pieces. The talk argues for gathering them, and for giving the process the enforcement it lacks.

An introduction to the different intellectual property rights and to the ways cultural and creative businesses can turn them to account.

An intellectual property marketplace is a venue where rights holders and buyers meet to assign, licence or partner. A wave of them appeared in the 2010s, which invites a look at their business models and at their position as intermediaries — and requires creative businesses to know their own rights well enough to seize the opportunity and measure the risk.

The disputes around the AdWords service occupied scholars and courts in several jurisdictions while Google, trade mark owners and advertisers waited. The seminar sets out where European law and Hong Kong law had arrived. Presented with Alice Lee.

Counterfeiting is global, and a comparative study of it can hardly ignore Chinese law, as the main source of counterfeit goods, Hong Kong law, through which a large share of them transits, or European Union law, where many of them are bound.

Since TRIPS came into force in 1995, registrations, assignments and licences have grown, portfolios have driven mergers, and disputes have multiplied and grown more complex. Cost, delay and the wish for confidentiality pushed businesses towards arbitration, and specialised centres followed — WIPO, then Japan, the Arab centre, and Hong Kong with its semiconductor procedure. Whether intellectual property disputes may be arbitrated at all remains unsettled, since jurisdictions differ on what belongs to public order. The paper compares French, Belgian and Swiss law with Chinese and Japanese law, and asks whether the approach of developed countries can travel.