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Aiming to improve connectivity by building ‘roads’ that will channel economic development and achieve certain geopolitical and strategic objectives, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a critical element in China’s more comprehensive strategic play for a new and enhanced role in global economic governance. While often hyped by some as a modern form of the Marshall Plan, the BRI has been built on a weak foundation which threatens the economic and geopolitical objectives of the Initiative. This article focuses on the security of the Chinese international investment regime for private and state-owned investors confronting political and legal risks in BRI projects in various countries. Perhaps the greatest legal risk to Chinese investors is that China’s network of international investment treaties is insufficient to deal with the risks that Chinese investors face. After reviewing specific provisions and jurisprudence stemming from China’s treaties, the article provides possible mitigation strategies and solutions which China and investors can use to mitigate such risks.

Despite the looming expiration of the extended transition period under Article 66.1 of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on 1 July 2013, most least-developed countries (LDCs) have not made significant progress in implementing the TRIPS Agreement. WTO Members have accepted this reality and are currently considering another extension of the transition period. In the coming months, the discussions in the TRIPS Council on how to meaningfully integrate the poorest countries into the international system for the protection of intellectual property will intensify. This working paper seeks to assist these discussions by first providing a comprehensive legal analysis of the various rights and obligations for LDCs, developed country Members and international organizations under the transitional arrangements in the TRIPS Agreement, subsequent WTO legislation and in particular the TRIPS Council Decision of 2005. Next, the authors identify several major shortcomings in the priority needs assessment process as set out in the TRIPS Council Decision of 2005 and argue that there is a strong need for greater coordination on the national and multilateral level in order to unlock increased technical and financial assistance for LDCs. The working paper then concludes that an unconditional second extension of the transition period would be detrimental to LDC’s implementation of TRIPS and might also undermine the credibility of the entire multilateral IP regime. Instead, the authors propose a variety of alternative avenues to more successfully integrate LDCs into the international IP system.

Much has been written about numerous aspects of investor-state dispute settlement, and the literature grows larger with the release of every publicly available arbitral ruling. One exception, however, is intellectual property provisions in international investment agreements. The absence of scholarly literature in this area is surprising given not only the voluminous amount of literature written on Intellectual Property Chapters of FTAs but more importantly due to the potential effect the provisions may have on intellectual property rights (IPRs) and on governments to adequately protect areas of domestic interest such as public health.The aim of this article is to draw attention to the potential effect of intellectual property provisions in FTA Investment Chapters on governmental regulatory sovereignty as well as to highlight potential issues and inconsistencies between FTAs and other intergovernmental and multilateral agreements. The article is narrowly focused on recent FTAs, as opposed to longstanding BITs, in order to highlight the modern trends in international trade agreements such as regard for TRIPs standards of IP protection and the recent appearance of TRIPS-Plus provisions. Particular attention is focused on FTAs involving the US, South Korea, Switzerland, China, Australia and Chile. Where applicable, the recently negotiated but not yet implemented South Korea-US FTA (KORUS) will be used as an illustrative example. Both South Korea and US FTAs demonstrate a pro-active approach to negotiating international investment agreements and both nations also have an interest in protecting and enforcing IPRs.

This article examines the many factors that have created and continue to perpetuate the ongoing health crisis in developing countries. In so doing, the article will reveal that the focus on patent regulation is largely misguided and that the targeting of pharmaceutical companies and TRIPS has led to an unfortunate divergence from the actual critical issues that affect the delivery of much-needed care and medicines to the developing world. The article then argues that the critical issues lie not in constructing appropriate TRIPS provisions, but more so in providing financial resources to build, maintain and stabilize proper healthcare systems in those developing countries afflicted with public health crises. This article does not fully absolve pharmaceutical companies from blame nor does it claim that TRIPS strikes the appropriate balance between creators and users in every situation, but much has already been written on these two issues. Instead, this article focuses on and examines possible solutions or initiatives that may be adopted to alleviate the current public health problems and assesses their practicability in light of the particular situations and circumstances affecting the developing world.