Arbitration of international contract disputes: which arbitration body is best?

There are several articles on this blog about law and jurisdiction. An argument in favour of arbitration is that more countries agree to recognise overseas arbitration awards than overseas court awards. This is not a problem between countries in the EU. This week’s UK government paper on mutual recognition of judgments reminds us that the issue is an important one.

IP Draughts

In IP Draughts’ experience, a majority of IP licence agreements, R&D collaboration agreements and other IP-rich contracts are between parties who are incorporated in different jurisdictions.  An issue that often comes up when negotiating such contracts is which law and jurisdiction should apply to the contract.

Many factors come into play when deciding this point, too numerous to cover in this short posting.  A commonly-encountered scenario is that Party A, based in country A, would like the laws of country A to apply, and disputes to be referred to the courts of country A.  However, Party B, based in country B, would like the laws of country B to apply, and disputes to be referred to the courts of country B.

Sometimes, one party gets its own way, or the parties agree on a neutral law and jurisdiction.  Sometimes, the parties are willing to compromise on the jurisdiction point by…

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