The Battle to Define Asia’s Intellectual Property Law: From TPP to RCEP

A battle is under way to decide the intellectual property law for half the world’s population. A trade agreement that hopes to create a free trade area even larger than that forged by Genghis Khan will define intellectual property rules across much of Asia and the Pacific. The sixteen countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) include China, India, Japan, and South Korea, and stretch to Australia and New Zealand. A review of a leaked draft reveals a struggle largely between India on one side and South Korea and Japan on the other over the intellectual property rules that will govern much of the world. The result of this struggle will affect not only access to innovation in the Asia-Pacific, but also across Africa and other parts of the world that depend on generic medicines from India, which has been called the “pharmacy to the developing world.” Surprisingly, the agreement that includes China as a pillar may result in stricter intellectual property rights than those mandated by the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Perhaps even more surprisingly, such TRIPS-plus rights will be available in the RCEP states to the United States and European companies equally by somewhat recondite provisions in TRIPS. In sum, the RCEP draft erodes access to medicines and education across much of the world

Trump v. TikTok

How did a Chinese big tech company beat the president of the United States? When then-President Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok, ostensibly because of its Chinese roots, US courts came to TikTok\u27s rescue. Rather than deferring to the president\u27s claims of a national security emergency justifying the ban, courts held that the president lacked statutory authority to ban TikTok. This Article chronicles the Trump administration\u27s attempt to either ban TikTok or to compel its sale to a very American company, preferably one led by a political ally. The TikTok affair thus demonstrates what Harold Koh calls the National Security Constitution at work-with courts and Congress checking and balancing the president even with respect to foreign relations and national security

Is Data Localization a Solution for Schrems II?

For the second time this decade, the Court of Justice of the European Union has struck a blow against the principal mechanisms for personal data transfer to the United States. In Data Protection Commissioner v Facebook Ireland, Maximillian Schrems, the Court declared the EU-US Privacy Shield invalid and placed significant hurdles to the process of transferring personal data from the European Union to the United States via the mechanism of Standard Contractual Clauses. Many have begun to suggest data localization as the solution to the problem of data transfer; that is, don’t transfer the data at all. I argue that data localization neither solves the problem of foreign surveillance, nor enhances personal privacy, while undermining other values embraced by the European Union