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AbstractSeveral recent detentions of generic pharmaceutical products transiting through the European Union (EU) for suspected infringements of intellectual property rights raised serious concerns for public health advocates and threatened to expose systemic problems existing in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The detentions not only garnered international attention, but India and Brazil formally began WTO dispute settlement proceedings against the EU. The parties recently reached a mutually agreed solution to the matter and the proceedings have been halted, leaving unanswered the complex legal and technical questions raised by the detentions of pharmaceuticals in transit. Despite a solution being reached in this dispute, the matter will undoubtedly resurface in the near future for a number of reasons. For instance, the EU is attempting to export its laws to its trading partners through the negotiation of free trade agreements and in other forums such as the recently concluded Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which increases the likelihood that similar detentions will occur at some point in the future. Moreover, recent trends in international intellectual property law indicate a move towards increased protection and enforcement in at least the short and medium term. The issue therefore offers the opportunity for rich legal analysis into an underexplored, yet increasingly important, aspect of WTO law.

This paper (accepted for publication in the Journal of International Economic Law 15 (2012)) uses the term 'legal methodology' as referring to the conceptions of the sources and 'rules of recognition' of law, the methods of interpretation, the functions and systemic nature of legal systems like international economic law (IEL), and their relationships to other areas of law and politics. It begins with discussing six competing theories of justice justifying international economic regulation. This overview of theories of justice is followed by a discussion of competing moral, economic, political and legal conceptions of the 'primary' and 'secondary rules' of IEL. Due to the 'dual nature' of modern legal systems resulting from the universal recognition of human rights and of other principles of justice, legal positivism, natural law theories, social and policy conceptions of national, transnational and international legal systems must be applied in mutually coherent ways. As law and jurisprudence are less about 'truth' than about 'institutionalizing public reason', positive and normative legal arguments must respect legitimate 'constitutional pluralism' and 'reasonable disagreement' about interpretation and legal protection of civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights as relevant context for interpreting IEL. The paper explains why, due to 'globalization' and the transformation of ever more national into transnational public goods, national Constitutions have become 'partial constitutions' that can no longer protect many public goods without international law and institutions. Constitutional and 'public goods' theories confirm that the five competing conceptions of IEL must be embedded into a multilevel constitutional framework limiting abuses of public and private power in all human interactions at national, transnational and international levels. The paper includes case-studies illustrating the need for comparative institutional research on which multilevel legal, institutional and regulatory approaches protect human rights, other cosmopolitan rights of citizens and related public goods most effectively. The obvious 'governance failures' in protecting interdependent public goods call not only for 'democratic empowerment' of citizens by cosmopolitan rights compensating the inadequate parliamentary control of multilevel governance by new forms of 'participatory', deliberative and cosmopolitan democracy. The obvious abuses of 'Westphalian conceptions' of 'international law among states' must also be limited by stronger multilevel judicial protection of cosmopolitan rights in order to hold governments more accountable for their failures to protect interdependent public goods more effectively.

"This handbook describes the historical and legal background to the TRIPS Agreement, its role in the WTO and its institutional framework and reviews the following areas: general provisions and basic principles; copyright and related rights; trademarks; geographical indications; patents; industrial designs, layout-designs, undisclosed information and anti-competitive practices; enforcement of IPRs; dispute settlement in the context of the TRIPS Agreement; TRIPS and public health; and current TRIPS issues. It contains a guide to TRIPS notifications by WTO members and describes how to access and make use of the official documentation relating to the TRIPS Agreement and related issues. Furthermore, it includes the legal texts of the TRIPS Agreement and the relevant provisions of the WIPO conventions referred to in it, as well as subsequent relevant WTO instruments"--

The World Trade Organization (WTO) oversees the negotiation and enforcement of formal rules governing international trade. Why do countries choose to adjudicate their trade disputes in the WTO rather than settling their differences on their own? In Why Adjudicate?, Christina Davis investigates the domestic politics behind the filing of WTO complaints and reveals why formal dispute settlement creates better outcomes for governments and their citizens. Davis demonstrates that industry lobbying, legislative demands, and international politics influence which countries and cases appear before the WTO. Democratic checks and balances bias the trade policy process toward public lawsuits and away from informal settlements. Trade officials use legal complaints to manage domestic politics and defend trade interests. WTO dispute settlement enables states and domestic groups to signal resolve more effectively, thereby enhancing the information available to policymakers and reducing the risk of a trade war. Davis establishes her argument with data on trade disputes and landmark cases, including the Boeing-Airbus controversy over aircraft subsidies, disagreement over Chinese intellectual property rights, and Japan's repeated challenges of U.S. steel industry protection. In her analysis of foreign trade barriers against U.S. exports, Davis explains why the United States gains better outcomes for cases taken to formal dispute settlement than for those negotiated. Case studies of Peru and Vietnam show that legal action can also benefit developing countries.