International Law Archive

On April 1, India’s Supreme Court concluded a protracted legal battle between the Indian government and the pharmaceutical company Novartis, ruling that Indian companies could continue to produce low-cost generic versions of a drug the company had sought to patent. In an email interview, Sudip Chaudhuri, an economics professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta specializing in patents and the pharmaceutical industry, explained the background and likely impact of the ruling. WPR: What effect will the decision have on companies’ evergreening, or repatenting products after minor changes in their makeup, of pharmaceutical patents in India? Sudip Chaudhuri: Using […]

The U.S. has recently made two high-profile moves to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. has not joined and is barred by domestic law from supporting financially. In an email interview, Harry Rhea, assistant professor of criminal justice at Florida International University and author of the book “The United States and International Criminal Tribunals: An Introduction,” discussed U.S.-ICC cooperation and how the U.S. can bolster the court without joining it. WPR: Do recent U.S. moves to cooperate with the court — transferring Bosco Ntaganda to The Hague and including ICC suspects in the Rewards for Justice program, […]

Last week, Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty, the first international pact to regulate conventional arms sales across borders, citing its failure to ban weapons sales to rebel groups. In the absence of consensus, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to put the treaty to a vote on Tuesday morning. It is considered likely to pass overwhelmingly. “As we like to say, it’s ludicrous that the global trade in bananas is better regulated than the global trade in arms,” Allison Pytlak, campaign manager for the Control Arms Coalition, an international civil society […]