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Studies have indicated that international innovation collaboration has promoted technology transfer and knowledge spillover between countries. The conclusion of various international intellectual property (IP) treaties has played an essential role in optimizing the international innovation and collaboration environment. This study investigates the effect of IP treaties on international innovation collaboration and whether international IP treaties can promote collaboration between a country and other economies in the world.

After collecting and extracting the patent record data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a final dataset of 3,213,626 cooperative patents and 465,236 pairs of collaborations between two countries or regions is established. Based on the international patent collaboration data of 192 countries during 1976–2017, the changes in patent collaboration indicators after these countries joined 23 IP treaties are analyzed.

International IP treaties have significantly increased the number of patent cooperation countries of a country and its importance in international cooperation networks. The role of IP treaties is more manifested by the increased opportunities for a country's international innovation cooperation than its influence on global innovation; this is of extreme significance for developing countries to introduce advanced technologies.

Ginarte and Park (1997) have confirmed that IP treaties have helped to raise the level of IP protection. In this study, the increase in the degree centrality of the international innovation network is evidence of IP treaties to promote innovation cooperation. For a developing country, joining an intellectual property treaty may strengthen intellectual property protection and optimize its own international innovation cooperation methods.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper aims to explain how the EU projects its own data protection regime to third states and the US in particular. Digital services have become a central element in the transatlantic economy. A substantial part of that trade is associated with the transfer of data, most of it personal, requiring many of the new products and services emerging to adhere to data protection standards. Yet different conceptions of data protection exist across the Atlantic, with the EU putting a particular focus on protecting the fundamental right to privacy.

Using the distinction between positive and negative forms of market integration as a starting point (Scharpf, 1997), this paper examines the question of how the EU is projecting its own data protection regime to third states. The so-called California effect (Vogel, 1997) and the utilization of trade agreements in the EU’s foreign policy and external relations are well researched. With decreasing effectiveness and limited territorial reach of its enlargement policy, the EU found trade agreements to be particularly effective to set standards on a global level (Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2009). The existence of the single market makes the Union not only an important locus of regulation but also a strong economic actor with the global ambition of digital assertiveness. In the past, establishing standards for the EU’s vast consumer market has proven effective in compelling non-European market participants to join.

As the globe’s largest consumer market, Europe aims to project its own data protection laws through the market place principle (lex loci solutionis), requiring any data processor to follow its laws whenever European customers’ data are processed. This paper argues that European data protection law creates a “California Effect”, whereby the EU exerts pressure on extra-territorial markets by unilateral standard setting.

With its GDPR, the EU may have defused the problem of European citizens’ data being stored and evaluated according to the US law. However, it has also set a precedent of extra-territorial applicability of its legislation – despite having previously criticized the USA for such practices. By now, international companies increasingly store data of European customers in Europe to prevent conflicts with EU law. With this decision, the EU will apply its own law on others’ sovereign territory. Conflicts created through the extra-territorial effects of national law may contradict the principle of due diligence obligations but are nevertheless not illegitimate. They may, however, have further unintended effects: Other major economies are likely to be less reluctant in the future about passing legal provisions with extra-territorial effect.

This chapter provides an overview of five modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, designs, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

This chapter provides an overview of the five main modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and designs – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of firms’ internationalization on the relationship between intellectual property right (IPR) protection and their technological innovation. While recent studies provide a negative relationship between IPR protection and technological innovation, this paper argues that firm’s internationalization weaken the negative relationship. This research is a meaningful step to clarify the theoretical conflict and empirical ambiguity of the effect of IPR protection on technological innovations.

This paper empirically analyzes the theoretical arguments with 204 US firms, which registered their patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and have been listed in the Compustat database between 2007 and 2010.

The paper suggests that IPR protections brings more benefit to firms with high multinationality and are more export-oriented in terms of developing technological innovation, whereas the effects of international knowledge stock is unclear in the relationship between IPR protection and technological innovation.

This study shows the effects of internationalization factors, which provide the benefits of cost efficiency and of more resource accessibility on the relationship between IPR protection regime and a firm’s technological innovation. The implication for policy makers and firm managers is that utilizing internationalization resources and capabilities is essential in developing their firms’ technological innovation under a strong IPR protection.

This paper enriches the literature of IPRs and offers the direction for future research on how a firm’s internationalization matters in its innovative activities under IPR protection.

This article aims to deal with international investment disputes, with a focus on the nature of the law applicable to the merits of such disputes.

The procedure for determining the law applicable in investment disputes, the phases of determination and the impact thereof on the applicable law were analyzed. The diagonality of the disputes and its impact on the law applicable to the merits from the perspective of the interaction between national and international law were also analyzed. Further, the authors focused on the nature of the host state's breach of obligations towards the investor anchored in the investment treaty, and the effect thereof on the law applicable to the merits. In this respect, the notion of the investment itself was analyzed according to the relevant BITs and MITs. Finally, the authors analyzed the applicability of the Ordre Public concept to investment disputes.

The study provided practical demonstrations and examples of choice of law and application issues as resolved by the tribunals established under the ICSID.

The article deals mainly with the ICSID proceedings. Another should be also analyzed.

The paper provides a new insight into issues of the law applicable to investment disputes by analyzing this problematic in relation to all stages of investment arbitration proceedings. Particularly it took an innovative approach in shedding light on and analyzing the applicability of the Ordre Public concept in relation to investment protection, especially in relation to Article 52 of the ICSID Convention, and the recognition and enforcement proceedings of arbitral awards issued in the course of investment arbitration.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the cross-fertilization between environmental concerns and trade law, through an analysis of their primary texts and case law, and seek to what extent the concept of sustainable development is, or can be, embodied in such field of law. The question posed is whether the international trade law paradigm is well suited to implement the goals embodied in the concept of sustainable development.

In giving a tentative answer to the said question, also through the analysis of some trade law reform proposals, the author advocates that international trade law and sustainable development not only can have compatible goals but that they are (if not, they shall be) inseparably related to one another, from both an economic policy perspective and a legal standpoint.

The author concludes that the paradigms can be complementary to the extent that international trade law, while preserving a formal legal identity deriving from the current shape of its body of rules, has seen its application supporting and, eventually, giving sustainable development a normative force that it could not have achieved otherwise – and this, on a global and uniform scale. Although it may be contended that, after a preliminary survey of relevant international trade case law, this interaction is still a seed in its infancy and some changes must necessarily occur to make the trade paradigm keener and more effective in supporting environmental protection goals, the author argues that, given the difficulties in obtaining such changes, the existing trade paradigm structure has served (and will serve) sustainable development better than other paradigms, as a vehicle through which such concept can drive nations’ economic development more forcefully.

The paper contains a reasoned survey of the most important case law, outlining the main legal hurdles that the implementation of sustainable development encounters in the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism.

The value of this paper stands in the reasoned approach to the legal issues underlying the matters involved, specifically with respect to the analysis of Article XX GATT. Moreover, it remarks the effects that a developed system like the WTO can have in promoting sustainable development, addressing some of the most recent reform proposals.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the application of buffer zones as an urban landscape heritage management tool, using Rio de Janeiro as the main case study, in order to inform urban regulation around the sites inscribed as World Heritage Cultural Landscape and disclose its relevance to link urban planning, cultural heritage management and sustainable development.

The methodological approach encompasses: conceptual framework – contextualization of heritage protection theory, focusing on landscape protection and buffer zones; discussion: cross-national comparative overview of buffer zones conceptual framework on the international heritage protection policy; historical background and spatial analysis, through GIS mapping, of local heritage protection policy, tracing its evolution through time; examination of prospects and challenges of this management tool, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, based on previous international, local experiences on natural and cultural heritage protection; and gathering of strategies for the implementation of buffer zones in local landscape management.

Core heritage sites and their buffer zones are integrated elements and act together to protect landscape significance and dynamic integrity (DI). In Rio de Janeiro, beyond the function of a caution zone, other important functions of landscape heritage buffer zones are to guarantee spatial and social connections of the protected sites, as well as the visual relationship between them and other significant urban landscape features. Strategies for the implementation of buffer zones in local landscape management should address the articulation of landscape protection governance; the conservation of visual, functional and structural identity quality and legibility and the monitoring of DI.

The methodology approach adopted in this study may also benefit from and foster further investigations, which could include the elaboration of a landscape management plan and an impact assessment inventory, refining the scale of study to the level of local watersheds, and a deeper examination of the popular cultural imprints within the World Heritage property buffer zone.

Strategies to the implementation of the Carioca Landscapes buffer zone include a gradation of protection and control of impacts according to the distance of the core sites (in the form of rings or layers). The buffer zone should help to preserve the character, significance, and DI of the protected sites and guarantee their spatial and social connections, as well as the visual and functional relationship between them and between other significant landscape features of the city. All those management strategies should be founded on the elaboration of a broad urban landscape management plan with the local society involvement.

In Rio de Janeiro’s specific case, bridging the vision of culture and nature as opposite poles and, transcending the social segregation through community involvement should certainly be among the main guiding principles to the application of buffer zones for supporting landscape sustainability. Therefore, the establishment of regulation criteria and parameters within the limits of the buffer zone must acknowledge that the (urban) landscape should carefully articulate the different social agent visions and local urban contexts.

The main contribution of this paper is to gather different visions of the role of buffer zones and disclose possibilities of conciliation between theory and practice concerning landscape protection, arguing for gathering natural and cultural heritage policies into the urban planning processes. Harnessed together, the suggested buffer zone implementation strategies may provide a proactive approach to Rio’s urban landscape protection and contribute to foster landscape sustainability and resilience. Although based on a specific case study, the adopted methodological approach may be transferable, with some adjustments, to other World Heritage properties, especially those located in urban areas under development pressures.