2 Background on International Investment Law and Intellectual Property

Subject(s):

Intellectual property — Foreign Direct Investment — Most-favoured-nation treatment (MFN) — National treatment — Non-discrimination — Settlement of disputes

This chapter presents a background on international investment law and intellectual property (IP) rights, reviewing pertinent legal, economic, and political developments in these fields, and how they relate to the broader public international law context. It considers IP as a form of intangible property right and identifies the principal forms of IP: patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret. The single most important multilateral IP treaty is the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The chapter then looks at the increasing importance of intellectual property rights in foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as the increasing use and exploitation of IP rights through registrations of patents and trademarks. It also investigates the possibility of relying on international IP treaties in IP-related investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases.