Concept of Most Favoured Nation Treatment under General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [Amit Bhaskar]
The Concept of Most Favoured Nation enshrined in Article I: 1 of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) is one of the most fundamental principles on which the entire foundation of GATT and WTO rests. This principle is the core principle in the GATT and it aims to eliminate discrimination in the world trade and to promote liberalisation of world trade. Although this principle has a long history, it became prominent after World War-II when it was found that formation of trading blocks and discriminatory trade practices by the world major powers were one of the factors responsible for World War-II. This principle is often justified because of its trade-liberalisation potency.
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Rethinking section 3(d) in light of the Novartis judgment [Amit Bhaskar]
According to the European Generic Association, evergreening occurs when the brand name manufacturer literally “stockpiles” patent protection by obtaining separate 20 years patent on multiple attributes of a single product. These patents can cover anything from aspects of manufacturing process to tablet colour, or even a chemical produced by the body when the drug is ingested and metabolized by the patient.
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Safeguards: Emergency protection from imports [Sunil Kumar Patel]
Safeguard measures are often defined as ‘emergency’ actions with respect to increased imports of particular products, where such imports have caused or threaten to cause serious injury to the importing member''s domestic industry, moreover it is a temporary relief in a form of grace given to the domestic producers when imports of a particular product, as a result of tariff concessions or other World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations undertaken by the importing country, increase unexpectedly to a point that they cause or threaten to cause serious injury to domestic producers of ‘like or directly competitive products’.
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A brief note on a few concerns with the 123 Agreement [Prachi Shrivastava]
The AP is a document, which cannot be taken lightly as it will include all the intrusive provisions of safeguards inspections. There is a possibility this could be under wraps or deferred to avoid immediate stalemate. This needs to be gone into in detail before taking any decision to go forward.
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Demurrage under the Customs Act, 1962 [Kinat Sisodia]
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Trade in services: Opportunities and constraints [Ministry of Commerce]
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The entry of foreign law firms will increase efficiency in utilitarian terms and will be Kaldor-Hicks efficient [Apoorva Paranjpe]
The use of Kaldor Hicks is apt in the case of the opening up of the Indian legal services as the criterion is most often used where impediments to competition are removed and the losers are those who have previously been advantaged by the absence of competition.
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Fact finding and right to information under Article 13 of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding [Anjan Kalita]
Under the direction of the Appellate Body, the WTO has eschewed the trappings of the less legalistic model that previously prevailed: one that often was quick to focus on the parties’ intentions in negotiating an agreement (as opposed to construing the text that emerged from their negotiations), emphasized the need to maintain a balance of concessions, often construed obligations rather narrowly, and did not attempt to go further than the contracting parties had by filling lacunae in agreements.
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Adjusting to trade liberalization: the role of policy, institutions and WTO disciplines [Marc Bacchetta and Marion Jansen for WTO Special Studies ]
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FDI in real estate [Amit Chowdhury, Polali Sriram]
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GATS and financial services: Impact on developing countries []
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Applicable law in an international contract [Chrishmal Warnasuriya ]
One of the most common obstacles in all international contracts, if not provided for specifically in the contract is the search for the ‘governing (or proper) law of the contract; the question as to which system of law would govern the interpretation of the contract.
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Switching to electronic bills of lading [Juhi Malviya]
International efforts to replace traditional paper bills of lading with an EDI system still have a long way to go. Even though there are a number of rules that support the use of electronic bills of lading and also projects that actually operate electronic bills of lading in practice, there is still a lack of international confidence in the use of electronic bills. This is because one of the distinguishing features of international trade is that a large number of parties may be involved in a single shipment of goods.
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Compounding of contraventions: FEMA 1999 [Shilpa Bhadoria, Sushil Simoliya]
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The Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between India and the United States of America [Rajeev Dhavan, Bhairav Acharya (PILSARC)]
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