[Hague-jur-commercial-law] Quick note from the hague today

[Manon Ress]

Quick note from the Hague
23 documents have been distributed since Tuesday June 14 but only 20 have
been discussed.
Article 7 and article 20 as well as intellectual property issues have
quite controversial.

For article 7 obligations of a court not chosen there´s been some changes:
for example in c).  A court can refuse to hear the case if
c) gving effect to the agreement would lead to a very serious injustice or
would be manifestly contrary to fundamental principles of the public
policy of the State of the court seized
d) for exceptional reasons, the agreement cannot reasonnably be performed, or

Well, `"very serious" could be replaced by "manifest# and there is a
proposal to delete #fundamental principles" and d).

The objective is to narrow as much as possible reasons a court could
decide not to hear the case ( the escape clause).
There was talk of non negotiated contract and the UK made a statement to
ensure that everyone understands that that does not mean that non
negotiated contracts would be out.  Inclusion of non negotiated contracts
seems to be an important concern for the UK delegation.

Art 20 is the declaration with respects to specific matters.  Countries
could decide to make a declaration excluding for example asbestos
litigation or joint venture related litigations.  The threshold for the
declaration is the big issue here.  Too many carve outs and the covnention
is meaningless, not enough and too many states would not sign.

Which brings me to today.  IP issues have been brought back full swing. 
Validity may be in too depending on how you intepret the stay of
proceedings article.  The Australian delegation is still against having IP
in the scope and gave examples of business method patents...The Chinese
delegation is also wondering why copyright and related rights should be in
the scope.  Russia is also for exclusion of IP. However, the US, EC.
Swizterland and New Zealand seem to say that what would give value to the
convention would be inclusion of all IP matters....The IFPI (MPA) and IBA
(represented by a patent lawyer from the US) of course supported the US
position.  Too bad we do not have public interest groups around.