CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Tilt, David |
|---|---|
| Title | Understanding Dispute Resolution Bodies in International Patent Law: A Global Administrative Law Perspective on International Law-Making |
| Summary | Patent law, in many ways, reflects the complex state of law and legal research in 2023. While from a narrow perspective it simply provides legal protection for technical innovations, its impact is at once political, societal, and legal in a way that undermines strict divisions in academic work. From this broader perspective, patent law has been understood from a variety of different viewpoints that emphasise its property characteristics, its relationship to human rights, and as a form of international regulation. The thesis instead approaches the development of international patent law from a Global Administrative Law (GAL) perspective that explores the role of dispute settlement bodies in a European context. Focusing on the role of dispute resolution bodies reflects many themes that emerge in GAL scholarship, highlighting the important function of non-legislative bodies and non-episodic forms of dispute resolution in law and law-making. The thesis brings together values and perspectives from international patent law, administrative law, and GAL to analyse how dispute resolution bodies contribute significantly to the functioning and development of international patent law. The work is grounded in five main research questions – how are new systems of patent law created? Is there a distinct global space in international patent law? What are the processes through which different systems of patent law interact? What is the role of dispute settlement bodies in facilitating these systemic interactions? To what degree does patent law reflect specific values drawn from GAL scholarship? Adopting a GAL perspective to the development of international patent law emphasises the relationship between dispute settlement bodies and accountability, transparency, and participation in a dynamic context. The thesis, while not comparative in a traditional sense, uses the EU to ground each chapter to support a more thorough exploration of these values in an international patent law setting. iv Chapter 1 contextualises the theoretical approach of the thesis, exploring how international patent law can be understood in terms of GAL scholarship and the major concepts in this area. Chapter 2 explores the development of the European Patent with Unitary Effect (EPUE) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) from a GAL perspective that questions the degree to which the system empowers participation. Chapter 3 shifts towards the relationship between the CJEU and the WTO, emphasising the creative role of the CJEU in modulating EU accountability for WTO obligations. Chapter 4 approaches the more diffuse bilateral trade context in a way that highlights the fundamentally interconnected nature of accountability, transparency, and participation in patent law in the bilateral space. The thesis provides three general contributions, the first of which is developing the relationship between international patent law and the emerging system of global administration. International patent law has been discussed as regulatory, yet the exercise of delegated administrative power that provides the foundation of patent law means that patent law can also be understood from an administrative perspective. The second contribution of the thesis is more abstract and connects several contemporary issues in international patent law. By recognising the administrative foundation of patent law, the thesis then deconstructs it through the lens of accountability, transparency, and participation as a form of internal critique. This is in contrast to the approaches found throughout the literature that often involve applying a specific distributive or human rights perspective to issues of patent law that can raise questions of legitimacy. The third contribution of the thesis is that it provides a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the role of dispute resolution bodies in the development of international patent law. Approaching this area from a GAL perspective, the thesis explores how dispute settlement bodies are central institutions for promoting (and also undermining) traditional administrative values like accountability, accessibility, and participation. |
| Supervisor | Schmidt-Kessen, Maria-Jose; Tajti, Tibor |
| Department | Legal Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/tilt_david.pdf |
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