It is my pleasure to announce this conference, to be held on February 24th 2017 at the University of Edinburgh, to celebrate Private International Law as ethics of engaging the other. Exploring a variety of private international law themes, this one-day conference will bring together world-renowned academics and experienced private international lawyers from a wide range of jurisdictions and institutions. The experts will discuss topics such as international jurisdiction, international judicial cooperation, cross-border family issues, cross-border consumer protection, private international law of succession and labour migration, from a range of national and regional perspectives; and reflect on the role of international treaties, international institutions and national courts in the efficient management of legal diversity.

Venue: St. Trinnean’s Room, St. Leonard’s Hall – University of Edinburgh, EH16 5AY

Click here for the programme.

Registration is required – Register at: www.law.ed.ac.uk/events  Attendance Fee: £40.00 per attendee.

On 10 November 2016, the French MEP Joëlle Bergeron submitted to the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament a draft report regarding the protection of vulnerable adults.

The draft report comes with a set of recommendations to the European Commission. Under the draft, the European Parliament, among other things, ‘deplores the fact that the Commission has failed to act on Parliament’s call that it should submit … a report setting out details of the problems encountered and the best practices noted in connection with the application of the Hague Convention [of 13 January 2000 on the international protection of adults], and ‘calls on the Commission to submit … before 31 March 2018, pursuant to Article 81(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, a proposal for a regulation designed to improve cooperation among the Member States and the automatic recognition and enforcement of decisions on the protection of vulnerable adults and mandates in anticipation of incapacity’.

A document annexed to the report lists the ‘principles and aims’ of the proposal that the Parliament expects to receive from the Commission.

In particular, following the suggestions illustrated in a study by the European Parliamentary Service, the regulation should, inter alia, ‘grant any person who is given responsibility for protecting the person or the property of a vulnerable adult the right to obtain within a reasonable period a certificate specifying his or her status and the powers which have been conferred on him or her’, and ‘foster the enforcement in the other Member States of protection measures taken by the authorities of a Member State, without a declaration establishing the enforceability of these measures being required’. The envisaged regulation should also ‘introduce single mandate in anticipation of incapacity forms in order to facilitate the use of such mandates by the persons concerned, and the circulation, recognition and enforcement of mandates’.

In the meanwhile, on 15 December 2016, Latvia signed the Hague Convention of 2000 on the international protection of adults. According to the press release circulated by the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, the Convention is anticipated to be ratified by Latvia in 2017.

See here for a fascinating post by Professor Marketa Trimble (UNLV Law).  From the post:

Now that conflict of laws has caught up with Silicon Valley and is forcing internet companies to rethink the problems that occupy this fascinating field of law, conflict-of-laws experts should catch up on the internet: they should better educate themselves about internet technology; they should prepare law students for a practice in which the internet is a common, and not a special or unusual, feature; and they should prevent conflict of laws from becoming a fragment of larger trade negotiations in which multifaceted, intricate, and crucial conflict-of-laws policy considerations can easily be overlooked or ignored.

This book authored by M.E. Ancel, P. Deumier and M. Laazouzi, and published by Sirey, is the first manual written in French solely devoted to international contracts examined through the lens of judicial litigation and arbitration. It provides a rich and rigorous presentation in light of the legal instruments recently adopted or under discussion in France, as well as at the European and international levels. 

After an introduction to  the general principles of the matter, the reader will be able to take cognizance of the regimes of the most frequent contracts in the international order: business contracts (sale of goods and intermediary contracts), contracts relating to specific sectors (insurance, transport), contracts involving a weaker party (labor and consumer contracts) or a public person.

Advanced students, researchers as well as practitioners will find in this volume the tools enabling them to grasp the abundant world of international contracts, to identify the different issues and to master the many sources of the discipline.

The ensemble is backed up by a highly developed set of case law and doctrinal references, updated on August 15, 2016.

More information about the book in traditional format is available here, and here for the e-book format.

Marie-Elodie Ancel is a professor at the University Paris Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC), where she heads two programs in International Business Litigation and Arbitration.

Pascale Deumier is a professor at the Jean Moulin University (Lyon 3), where she is a member of the Private Law Team and coordinates the research focus on the Sources of Law.

Malik Laazouzi is a professor at the Jean Moulin University (Lyon 3), where he heads the Master 2 of Private International and Comparative Law.

The BIICL is seeking to appoint three Research Assistants on a 0.8 FTE basis for paid internships of four months each, with the possibility of extension for a further month.

Research Assistants are expected to undertake various core tasks, including:

*           Assisting in the coordination and organisation of research activities;

*          Contributing to the production of high quality research in their areas including, where appropriate, assisting with desk-based research, literature reviews, data analysis, drafting of proposals and submissions, report writing and drafting of articles, social media content etc.

*         Assisting in the management and co-ordination of events;

*         Attending meetings with external groups/partners, including government, legal profession and NGOs; and

*         Working as part of a team with other researchers.

Research Assistants will each be assigned to a Supervisor in their legal areas. For this round of applications, we are particularly looking to appoint in the areas of:

*       Public International Law;

*       Private International Law and/or Competition Law; and

*       Rule of Law

Lawyers who speak both Spanish and English may be interested in a new book written by Professors S.I. Strong of the University of Missouri, Katia Fach Gómez of the University of Zaragoza and Laura Carballo Piñeiro of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Comparative Law for Spanish-English Lawyers: Legal Cultures, Legal Terms and Legal Practices / Derecho comparado para abogados anglo- e hispanoparlantes: Culturas jurídicas, términos jurídicos y prácticas jurídicas (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2016), is an entirely bilingual text that seeks to help those who are conversationally fluent in a second language achieve legal fluency in that language. The book, which is aimed primarily at private international and comparative lawyers, is appropriate for both group and individual study, and provides practical and doctrinal insights into a variety of English- and Spanish-speaking jurisdictions. The book is available in both hard copy and electronic form, and Elgar is currently offering a discount on website sales. See here for more information.

archa joint seminar of the Child & Family Law Quarterly and Cambridge Family Law

27 March 2017, at Trinity College, University of Cambridge

The withdrawal of the UK from the European Union will precipitate important change in the field of international family law. EU law has increasingly come to define key aspects of both jurisdiction and recognition & enforcement of judgments on divorce, maintenance, and disputes over children, including international child abduction, and provided new frameworks for cross-national cooperation. At this seminar, international experts and practitioners will discuss the impacts of ‘Brexit’ on family law, from a range of national and European perspectives, and reflect on the future of international family law practice in the UK.

Booking will open soon. CPD points will be available.

Please visit www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/ to join the Cambridge Family Law mailing list in order to receive an email when booking opens.

I’ve come across this piece of news by Stacie I. Strong, and found it worth to be shared.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon to address the question of whether the Hague Service Convention authorizes service of process by mail.

Click here to get to the initial submissions on whether the matter should be addressed by the SC.

Brussels Ibis Regulation – Changes and Challenges of the Renewed Procedural Scheme – Short Studies in Private International Law,

is the title of a book just released, edited by Vesna Lazic and Steven Stuij.

The book focuses on major amendments introduced in the Brussels I regulatory framework. The contributions scrutenise the changes introduced in the Brussels Ibis Regulation, a legal instrument that presents a core of the unification of private international law rules on the European Union level. It is one of the first publications addressing all the changes in the Brussels I regulatory scheme, which takes into consideration relevant CJEU case law up to July 2016.
The texts, written by legal scholars who have published extensively in the field of private international law and international civil procedure, will add to the development of EU private international law. In addition, the authors’ critical analysis may open further discussions on the topic and so benefit a consistent and harmonised application of the Regulation. In this respect the book takes a different approach than the commentaries which have so far been published.
It is primarily meant for legal academics in private international law and practitioners who are regularly engaged in cross-border civil proceedings. It may also be of added value to advanced students and to those with a particular interest in the subject of international litigation and more generally in the area of dispute resolution.

Vesna Lazic is a Senior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut, an Associate Professor of Private Law at Utrecht University and Professor of European Civil Procedure at the
University of Rijeka.
Steven Stuij is an expert in Private International Law and an external Ph.D. candidate at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam.

Click here for more information.

The author of this entry is Dr. Arantxa Gandía Sellens, senior research fellow at the MPI Luxembourg.

Yesterday the UK government announced that it is proceeding with preparations to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement. Following the Brexit vote, this piece of news is not only relevant for the patent world, but also for the future Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU (art. 50 Treaty of the European Union).

Here I will focus on the implications of this decision on the unitary patent system.

A brief explanation of the unitary patent system

The European patent with unitary effect –thus different from the «classic» European patent– was introduced by Regulation (EU) no. 1257/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection (hereinafter, Regulation 1257/2012).

According to its art. 2 (c), the European patent with unitary effect is a «[…] European patent which benefits from unitary effect in the participating Member States by virtue of this Regulation». Furthermore, its arts. 5 (1) and 1 (1) establish that the so-called unitary effect of this kind of patent consists of the protection provided throughout the territories of the Member States participating in the enhanced cooperation authorized by Decision 2011/167/EU. The unitary patent protection may be requested for any European patent granted on or after the date of application of Regulation 1257/2012 (art. 18.6), which is linked to the date of entry into force of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (hereinafter, UPC Agreement), following its art. 18 (2).

The object of the UPC Agreement is to establish a Unified Patent Court for the settlement of disputes relating to European patents and European patents with unitary effect (art. 1). The Agreement requires for its entry into force the ratification of at least thirteen Member States, including the three Member States in which the highest number of European patents had effect in 2012 (art. 89 (1)). At the moment, eleven States have ratified the convention, and only one of them is among those three States whose ratification is mandatory, namely France.

Who can sign and ratify the UPC Agreement?

According to art. 84 of the UPC Agreement, it is open for signature by any Member State. Regarding ratification, the same requirement applies: “This Agreement shall be subject to ratification in accordance with the respective constitutional requirements of the Member States. […]”.

Thus, while the UPC Agreement is not an EU instrument but a classical international convention, only Member States of the European Union can sign and ratify the UPC Agreement.

Notwithstanding the Brexit vote, the UK remains for the moment a Member State of the European Union; therefore, at this time the requirements established by the UPC Agreement for ratification are met. However, the UK government is determined to proceed to Brexit and to become a non-EU country. Therefore, the ratification could create a measure that is contrary to the European Treaties to which the UK is still bound. According to art. 4.3 of the Treaty on European Union a Member State “shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives”.

Consequences of the UK’s ratification of the UPC Agreement

Ratification of the UPC Agreement, followed by exit from the EU would create a series of consequences that would have to be dealt with:

1. The unitary patent cannot cover the territory of a third State. According to art. 3 of Regulation 1257/2012, the unitary patent shall have equal effect in all the participating Member States, meaning that States without the status of “Member State” are excluded. In that scenario, the unitary patent would not have effect in the UK, unless the necessary modifications are made in the legal instruments that constitute the so-called “unitary patent package”.
2. Both Regulation 1257/2012 and the UPC Agreement use the terms “participating Member States” or “Contracting Member States” when referring to the States taking part in the system. This wording is a reaction to the ECJ’s Opinion 1/09, which dealt with the question of the compatibility of the failed agreement creating a Unified Patent Litigation System with EU law (open also to third States). The ECJ opposed the participation of third States in that convention, as the referral of preliminary questions on EU law could not be guaranteed. Moreover, a third State cannot refer preliminary questions on EU law to the ECJ. This means that a non-member State would not be able to comply with Art. 21 of the UPC Agreement, titled “Requests for preliminary rulings”: “[…] the Court shall cooperate with the Court of Justice of the European Union to ensure the correct application and uniform interpretation of Union law […]”.

3. A seat of the central division cannot be located in a third State. Art. 7.2 of the UPC Agreement establishes that the central division shall have its seat in Paris, with sections in London and Munich. Although the UPC Agreement does not require that the sections of the central division must be located in a Contracting Member State (paradoxically, this requisite does exist for the local and regional divisions, so that it could also be argued that it applies to the central division, mutatis mutandis), the question is not clear cut in light of the EU’s constitutional framework, which includes the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Two options for the unitary patent system after the Brexit vote

Taking into consideration that the UK will have the status of a non-EU country (third State), two options remain open to proceed with the establishment of the system following the Brexit vote:

First option) Maintaining the status quo. As discussed above, if the UK ratifies now the UPC Agreement, the other Member States might rely on art. 4.3 EU Treaty in order to block that ratification. Once the UK’s ratification is blocked –and the wording of the UPC Agreement remains– the process for the start-up of the unitary patent system will be delayed until the negotiations following the exit declaration (art. 50 EU Treaty) are concluded.

If, after the negotiations, it is agreed that the unitary patent system should be established without the UK, the UPC Agreement will have to be modified, at least regarding the seat of the UPC central division in London (art. 7.2 of the UPC Agreement).

Second option) Including the UK in the unitary patent system. If the UK ratifies the UPC agreement and the other Member States do not rely on art. 4.3 EU treaty, the setting up process will continue as it has been foreseen.

At the moment, as the UK is still an EU Member State, its active participation in the unitary patent system does not entail any problem, formally speaking. On the contrary, the UK is one of the three Member States in which the highest number of European patents had effect in 2012, which makes its ratification a condition for the setting up of the system (art. 89 of the UPC Agreement). However, when the UK loses its status as EU Member State, some modifications to the UPC Agreement will have to be made. Those modifications will have: 1) to make sure that third States are invited to take part in the system, provided that they oblige themselves to respect EU law and refer questions to the ECJ (in light of the Opinion 1/09); and 2) to change Regulation 1257/2012, in order that the unitary patent system can cover the territory of third States. This might also entail the participation in the system not only by the UK, but also by other interested third States.

The biggest disadvantage of this option is the risk of endangering the application and interpretation of EU law, as already pointed out in the ECJ’s Opinion 1/09. The ECJ will have to be consulted on the possibility of the inclusion of third states if those third States are willing to respect the primacy of EU law, referring preliminary questions to the ECJ when necessary. This would be a new feature in comparison to the failed agreement creating a Unified Patent Litigation System, where the referral of preliminary questions to the ECJ was not guaranteed.