Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law - Volume 11

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What is the future of international trade and investment law in the technology sector?  Our authors examine the availability of using international investment law and arbitration to enforce intellectual property rights, market access commitments, obligations to permit cross-border data flows, and other business interests in the technology sector.  In particular, they will focus on the state of trade and investment law to answer the question: is the current state of these remedies adequate or should there be a movement for a truly international regime for the protection of IP rights and other tech company interests in investor-State arbitration?

MR. LAIRD:  Welcome back everyone. The next panel will be looking more broadly at the issue of the future for this type of dispute settlement in the technology sector. We are privileged to have Ted Posner come and be our moderator. Ted is a partner in the international arbitration and trade practice at Weil Gotshal here in their Washington, D.C., office.  Many of you know Ted very well as an experienced litigator, negotiator, and advisor in all areas of international trade regulation, international trade agreements, and investment treaties, and we are grateful to have Ted here today to lead our third panel.

So, I’ll pass it over to Ted.

MR. POSNER: Well, Ian, thank you for the introduction, and I’ll say, Ian, I got the invitation to come moderate this participant relatively recently, and my first reaction was, well, I can’t say no to Ian, but it’s so late in the day and how can I prepare, and, you know, sort of taking time out from routine and everything, but having now read the papers that tee up this discussion, I’m very grateful for the invitation, grateful for the opportunity to moderate this panel because I think you’re in for a real treat.

I gather the papers are on‑line, and so people may have read them.  If you haven’t, I would encourage to you do so.  I think we have before us a very interesting discussion on the role for conventional forms of dispute settlement, in particular investor‑State dispute settlement, when dealing with issues that arise out of sort of cutting‑edge parts of the economy and more novel varieties of dispute, and I think the debate is teed up very nicely by Jan and Manish.  You have their biographies in your program, and so I will leave you to review that at your leisure.