As reported yesterday, the recent tragedies in Bangladesh factories have resulted in a major breakthrough with the signing of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Thus far, leading retailers such as H&M, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Benetton, and Calvin Klein are on board. Notably absent from the list are leading U.S. retailers such as Wal-Mart and Gap.

As noted in my previous post, I have been arguing for years that international arbitration could serve as an important procedural tool for promoting human rights in global supply chains. I applaud the commitment of these retailers to join with leading labor rights groups and enter into a binding agreement to im [...]

The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) has issued new rules that came into force on April 1, 2013. The rules changes are accompanied by new Practice Notes for cases administered by SIAC under its rules and the UNCITRAL rules that also came into force on the same date. While the changes do not reflect a significant overhaul of the prior version of the institution’s rules, they do contain important changes of which practitioners should be aware.

The 2013 rules are the fifth set of rules issued by SIAC, which promulgated previous versions in 1991, 1997, 2007, and 2010. The SIAC rules are one of several sets of arbitral rules to be updated in the last few years; other [...]

And Anand Varu.

In Omnipharm Limited v Merial [2013] EWCA Civ 2, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales (CA) upheld a first instance decision to revoke one of Merial’s patents on grounds of insufficiency.  The CA also dismissed Merial’s appeal against an order to pay 40% of Omnipharm’s costs and awarded costs to Merial in relation to applications made for preserving Omnipharm’s security for costs.

The patents in question were EP 0,881,881 (the ‘881) and GB 2,317,564 (the ‘564), which related to “spot‑on” formulations of parasiticide fipronil for protecting animals against ticks and fleas.

Background

Prior to the action Omnipharm had requested acknowledgements of non‑in [...]

and Oleg Temnikov

I. Bureau Veritas v. Republic of Paraguay

In the recent Further decision on objections to jurisdiction dated October 9, 2012 the tribunal in Bureau Veritas, Inspection, Valuation, Assessment and Control, BIVAC B.V. v. Paraguay (ICSID Case No. ARB/07/9) dismissed BIVAC’s claim based on violation of the fair and equitable standard by reasoning that the dispute relates to mere refusal to pay invoices under a pre-shipment inspection contract and that, in doing so, Paraguay has not acted “in a manner that is qualitatively different from an ordinary contracting party.” The tribunal thus upheld the traditional distinction between mere breach of contract and treaty breach st [...]

and José Roberto Oliva Junior and Ricardo Dalmaso Marques, Pinheiro Neto Advogados

One of the segments of the infrastructure sectors in Brazil that have lately triggered the greatest amount of disputes are the power generation, distribution and trading sectors. In effect, there’s little disagreement in Brazil nowadays that, just as with other sectors that could also be mentioned here (such as oil and gas, sanitation, ports, etc.), in the power sector in general the arbitrators and the lawyers defending the interests of the litigants must have expertise in or at least deeper technical knowledge of the matter in controversy, namely as a result of the complex regulations that followed the [...]

Shanghai’s Recent Reaction

As a recent development of the ongoing conflicts within the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration (CIETAC), the CIETAC Shanghai Sub-Commission has now officially been renamed Shanghai International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission; it will also use Shanghai International Arbitration Center (“SHIAC”) concurrently as official name. (See official announcement of the SHIAC). On 11 April 2013, SHIAC and Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shanghai jointly held a press conference and unveiling ceremony.

The Shanghai Municipal Government approved the name change, clarifying the status of the new commission. During the ceremony, [...]