May 2022

Intellectual property (IP)[1] rights are the rights awarded by society to individuals or organizations principally over creative works: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. They give the creator the right to prevent others from making unauthorized use of their property for a limited period. IP is categorized as Industrial Property (functional commercial innovations), and Artistic and Literary Property (cultural creations). Current technological developments are blurring, to some extent, this distinction, and some hybrid sui generis systems are emerging.   Industrial Property Patents: A patent is an exclusive right awarded to an inventor to prevent others from making, selling, distributing, importing, or using their invention, without license or authorization, for a fixed period of time (TRIPS stipulates 20 years minimum from the filing date). In return, society requires that the patent applicant disclose the invention in a manner that enables others to put it into practice. This increases…

1.1   Introduction[1] Corruption is generally considered one of the greatest enemies of international trade. Where corruption runs rampant, fair players are prevented from accessing the market, and performance and quality are excluded from competition by those who use bribery as a means of acquiring contracts. It is a problem of vast magnitude: according to a frequently quoted World Bank study, an estimated USD1 trillion in bribes are paid each year. Corruption is said to increase the total cost of doing business globally by up to 10 % and the cost of procurement contracts in developing countries by up to 25 %. This means that for the EU alone approximately EUR120 billion, or 1 % of its GDP, is lost to corruption every year. The international community has therefore undertaken serious efforts to tackle the problem of corruption; the topic has been of the highest priority since the mid-1990s. Countless sets of rules have mushroomed up…

1          Background The long-awaited and much-anticipated “United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea”,  which will be known as the “Rotterdam Rules”,  was formally adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on 11th December 2008.  It has been open for signature since 23rd September 2009 (when the first sixteen nations signed the Convention at the formal signing ceremony in Rotterdam). This new convention represents the culmination of 8 years of intensive work by the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and its Working Group III on Transport Law,  which followed almost 4 years of preparatory work by the Comite´ Maritime International (CMI).  It will enter into force after twenty countries have ratified it.  Several countries are already well advanced in the ratification process, including the United States. As this paper goes to press, however, it appears that Spain is the closest to ratifying the new convention. The…

Turmeric [1] Turmeric (Curcuma longa) is a plant of the ginger family yielding saffron-colored rhizomes used as a spice for flavoring Indian cooking. It also has properties that make it an effective ingredient in medicines, cosmetics, and color dye. As a medicine, it is traditionally used to heal wounds and rashes.   In 1995, two Indian nationals at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre were granted US patent no. 5,401,504 on “use of turmeric in wound healing”.The Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) requested the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to re-examine the patent.CSIR argued that turmeric has been used for thousands of years for healing wounds and rashes and therefore its medicinal use was not novel.Their claim was supported by documentary evidence of traditional knowledge, including an ancient Sanskrit text and a paper published in 1953 in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association.Despite arguments by the patentees, the USPTO upheld the…