General Principles of International Trade Laws, UNCITRAL, International Arbitration Laws and TRIPS

The phone in your pocket was designed in one country, made from parts in five others and sold in a Mumbai mall at a price no shopkeeper negotiated with a foreign government. What stops a country from taxing it unfairly, what lets its maker patent the design here, and where do the maker and its Indian distributor fight if the contract goes wrong? Four bodies of law answer these questions: the rules of the World Trade Organization, the work of UNCITRAL, the law of international arbitration, and the TRIPS Agreement on intellectual property.

In two minutes

International trade law combines the WTO's rules on market access and non-discrimination, UNCITRAL's model laws and conventions that harmonise private commercial law, arbitration rules that make foreign awards enforceable, and the TRIPS Agreement that sets minimum standards for intellectual property.

The rest of this chapter

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