Conflictoflaws

The most recent issue of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal (available here) is a special issue, guest edited by Janet Walker, Gerard Kennedy and Sagi Peari, considering the Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act.  This statute governs the taking of jurisdiction and both staying and transferring proceedings in civil and commercial matters in three Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.

The abstract to the introductory article states: “In 2016, the Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act (“CJPTA”) marked its tenth year in force.  Promulgated by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada, and adopted in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, the CJPTA was developed to clarify and advance the law of judicial jurisdiction.  In a symposium hosted by Osgoode Hall Law School, ten leading scholars were invited to present papers on specific questions in order to assess the promise of the CJPTA to meet the needs of Canadians in the years ahead and to provide leadership for the law in other parts of Canada.  This article provides an overview of the issues discussed in the symposium; it places the papers that were presented in the larger context of developments in the law of judicial jurisdiction in Canada and internationally; and it summarizes in an appendix the drafting reforms that might be made to the Act.”

The articles about the CJPTA are:

Judicial Jurisdiction in Canada: The CJPTA—A Decade of Progress (Janet Walker)

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other? Jurisdiction in Common Law Canada (Stephen G.A. Pitel)

Jurisdiction Motions and Access to Justice: An Ontario Tale (Gerard J. Kennedy)

Has the CJPTA readied Canada for the Hague Choice of Court Convention? (Geneviève Saumier)

General Jurisdiction over Corporate Defendants under the CJPTA: Consistent with International Standards? (Catherine Walsh)

Residual Discretion: The Concept of Forum of Necessity under the Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act (Michael Sobkin)

Three Objections to Forum of Necessity: Global Access to Justice, International Criminal Law, and Proper Party (Sagi Peari)

Cross-Border Transfers of Court Proceedings (Vaughan Black)

The Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act and the Hague Conference’s Judgments and Jurisdiction Projects (Joost Blom)

The workshop Cross-Border Debt Recovery in the EU. Application of the “second generation” regulations in France and Luxembourg, taking place at the MPI Luxembourg on June 8th, is organised in the framework of the IC2BE research project “Informed Choices in Cross-Border Enforcement” (JUST-AG-2016-02). Funded by the Justice Programme (2014-2020) of the European Commission, this project aims at assessing the working in practice of the “second generation” of EU regulations on procedural law for cross-border cases – the European Enforcement Order, Order for Payment, Small Claims (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2015/2421) and the Account Preservation Order Regulations. The project is carried out by a European consortium comprising the MPI Luxembourg and the universities of Antwerp, Complutense of Madrid, Milan, Rotterdam and Wroclaw, under the coordination of Prof. Jan von Hein, from the University of Freiburg.

Experts and practitioners from different countries, mainly France and Luxembourg, will get together on the 8th of June to address the application in practice of the above-mentioned regulations in both Member States. Presentations will be given by Prof. Cyril Nourissat, Mr. Marc Cagniart, Prof. Agnieszka Frackowiak-Adamska, Mr. Max Mailliet, Dr. Alina Ontanu, Ms. Julie Jasson, Dr. Katharina Raffelsieper, Ms. Katrien Baetens, Ms. Alice Canet, Mr. Grégory Minne and Ms. Clara Mara-Marhuenda. A panel discussion will follow, with the presence of, i.a., Prof. Gilles Cuniberti, Dr. Justus Froehlich, Mr. Patrick Gielen, Prof. Olivier Hance, Mr. Jona van Leeuwen, Dr. Stephan Lesage-Mathieu, Dr. Carl Friedrich Nordmeier, Dr. Herbert Woopen. The program is available here.

The spoken languages will be English and French.

The workshop is conceived as a closed event. However, people having a special interest on the topic are invited to apply for admission upon condition they provide a short explanation for their interest.

Contact address: veerle.vandeneeckhout@mpi.lu

The conference titled Pride and Prejudice in Cross-Border Cases will take place at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law on Tuesday 22 May 2018. It is intended to serve as an open forum for scholars and practitioners to address current issues pertaining to private international law. The programme offers selection of topics by speakers from both sides of the Atlantic. Conference fee is not charged, but prior registration is required at zeup@pravri.hr.

Sebastian Mock (University of Hamburg), Kristian Csach (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice) and Bohumil Havel (Institute of Law, Czech Academy of Science, Prague) have published an “International Handbook on Shareholders’ Agreements – Regulation, Practice and Comparative Analysis” addressing various issues of shareholders’ agreements. The book includes general remarks on specific topics related to shareholders’ agreements and numerous country reports. One chapter also specifically deals with cross-border shareholders’ agreements and private international law. More information is available on the website of the publisher (here).

This post has been written by Cristián Giménez Corte, Editor of the ASIL Commentaries on PIL.

We are pleased to present the third issue of Commentaries on Private International Law, the newsletter of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Private International Law Interest Group (PILIG). As readers of the newsletter know, the name of our newsletter, Commentaries, represents a modest tribute to one of the founding fathers of modern PIL, Joseph Story, by borrowing the name of his seminal book “Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, foreign and domestic,” and only replacing “Conflict of Laws” with “Private International Law” to better reflect the broader object of our discipline today.

The primary purpose of our newsletter is to communicate news on PIL. Accordingly, the newsletter attempts to transmit information on new developments on PIL rather than provide substantive analysis, with a view to providing specific and concise raw information that our readers can then use in their daily work. These new developments on PIL may include information on new laws, rules and regulations; new judicial and arbitral decisions; new treaties and conventions; new scholarly work; new conferences; proposed new pieces of legislation; and the like.

Commentaries aims to be a truly global newsletter, by reporting news from all major legal systems of the world, which may have different conceptions of PIL. Thus, the PILIG newsletter is framed in a rather broad sense, comprising all types of situations generating potential conflicts of laws and/or jurisdictions, regardless of the “international” or “internal,” or “public” or “private” nature of those conflicting regulations.

To achieve what is perhaps the first comprehensive global approach to PIL, Commentaries includes five sections dealing with regional issues, edited by specialists on the field: Africa, edited by Richard Frimpong Oppong and Justin Monsenepwo Joost; Asia, by Chi Chung, Yao-Ming Hsu and Béligh Elbalti; the Americas by Cristian Giménez Corte and Jeannette Tramhel (Central and South America), and Freddy Sourgens and Mayra Cavazos Calvillo (North America); Europe, by Massimo Benedettelli, Marina Castellaneta, and Antonio Leandro; and Oceania, by Jeanne Huang. We would like to highlight the efforts made by our global editorial team in translating, both linguistically and legally, into English and for a global audience information that was originally in Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French, German, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

This third issue of Commentaries covers more countries and includes in greater detail recent developments in our field. Each regional section includes a brief introductory note, and a special chapter devoted to new scholarly work, which is of particular importance for those areas of the world where the dissemination of information on PIL is more difficult. The main developments covered by Commentaries occurred during 2016, including only a few developments occurred in late 2015 and early 2017.

In this third issue, Commentaries continues to develop a section introduced last year. This section is called “Global Conflict of Laws,” edited by Cristián Giménez Corte and Javier Toniollo, presents new developments on PIL that are not necessarily linked to one particular region or country in the world, but that are truly transnational or global.

Commentaries would not have been possible without the tireless support of the PILIG co-chairs, Freddy Sourgens and Kabir Duggal, and the hard and smart work of the section editors mentioned above. In addition, I would like to express our gratitude for the comments, suggestions and help provided by Sheila Ward, Matthew Gomez, and Mitsue Steiner. And I would like also to express our gratitude to Adriana Chiuchquievich, Emilia Gonzalez Cian y Martin Cammarata, for their assistance in the research and edition of the new section “Global Conflict of Laws.”

We would appreciate receiving your suggestions, comments and critiques. We welcome your feedback and participation. Please send me an e-mail at cristiangimenezcorte@gmail.com.

Tanya Monestier (Roger Williams University School of Law) has published an article (available here) addressing the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Douez v Facebook, Inc. (available here).

The abstract reads: Every day, billions of people use the online social media platform, Facebook.  Facebook requires, as a condition of use, that users “accept” its terms and conditions — which include a forum selection clause nominating California as the exclusive forum for dispute resolution.  In Douez v. Facebook, the Supreme Court of Canada considered whether this forum selection clause was enforceable, or whether the plaintiff could proceed with her suit in British Columbia.  The Supreme Court of Canada ultimately decided that the forum selection clause was not enforceable.  It held that the plaintiff had established “strong cause” for departing from the forum selection clause.  The Court premised its decision on two primary considerations: the contract involved a consumer and was one of adhesion, and the claim involved the vindication of privacy rights. The Court’s analysis suffers from several major weaknesses that will undoubtedly cause confusion in this area of law.  This Article will examine those weaknesses, and argue that the Supreme Court of Canada actually abandoned the strong cause test that it claimed to be applying.  The consequence of the Douez decision is that many forum selection clauses — at least in the consumer context — will be rendered unenforceable.  While this may be a salutary development from the perspective of consumer protection, it will undoubtedly have an effect on companies choosing to do business in Canada.

Delaware’s governor John Carney signed a bill prohibiting marriage before age 18, making it the first US state to ban all child marriage, on May 9, 2018. Heather Barr from Human Rights Watch has more on that topic here.

The Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament has, on 18 April 2018, adopted an opinion entitled “Towards an EU external strategy against early and forced marriages – next steps” (2017/2275(INI), PE616.622v03-00). The Committee stresses that “child, early and forced marriage is a violation of the human rights enshrined in international standards such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action, the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action and the UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages and which form part of the core principles embodied in the European Union as an area of security, freedom, justice and human rights, including women’s and girls’ rights”. Although “child marriage is ingrained in some traditions and cultures, […] no culture or religion can justify such a practice, particularly when human rights and the rights of children are at stake.” The Committee “[n]otes that many parents living in distress and extreme poverty in refugee camps feel the need to protect their daughters from the threat of sexual violence by marrying them to older men; stresses however that the EU and its Member States should be united and consistent in their dismissal of the requests of refugees for legal recognition of marriages where one of the alleged spouses is a child or teenager; underlines that refugee status cannot be used as a legal backdoor to recognition of child marriages in Europe”. The full text of the opinion is available here. For a more detailed report, see here.

Pitt Law’s CILE will once more be co-sponsoring the Summer School in Transnational Commercial Agreements, Litigation, and Arbitration in Vicenza, Italy, beginning June 4 and ending June 8, 2018.

All classes will be in English, and as in prior years we expect to have the School approved for up to 24 hours of Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education credit (22 substantive and 2 ethics). The instructors include Ronald A. Brand (Professor, University of Pittsburgh), Serena Corongiu (Lawyer, AIGA Representative), Francesco Cortesi (Judge, Italian Supreme Court), Aldo Frignani (Professor, University of Turin), Paul Herrup (Department of State, United States of America), Luca Radicati di Brozolo (Professor, Catholic University, Milan; Fountain Court Chambers, London), Francesca Ragno (Professor, University of Veorna), Marco Torsello (Professor, University of Verona), Matteo Winkler (Professor, HEC Paris).

The program is available here

Teemu Juutilainen from the University of Helsinki has just published an interesting book on “Secured Credit in Europe: From Conflicts to Compatibility” (Hart Publishing, 2018). It sets out to to develop an optimal division of labour between private international law and substantive unification or harmonisation in the area of security rights over tangible movables and receivables:

This monograph seeks the optimal way to promote compatibility between systems of proprietary security rights in Europe, focusing on security rights over tangible movables and receivables. Based on comparative research, it proposes how best to tackle cross-border problems impeding trade and finance, notably uncertainty of enforceability and unexpected loss of security rights. It offers an extensive analysis of the academic literature of more recent years that has appeared in English, German, the Scandinavian languages and Finnish. The author organises the concrete means of promoting compatibility into a centralised substantive approach, a centralised conflicts-approach, a local conflicts-approach and a local substantive approach. The centralised approaches develop EU law, and the local approaches Member State laws. The substantive approaches unify or harmonise substantive law, while the conflicts approaches rely on private international law. The author proposes determining the optimal way to promote compatibility by objective-based division of labour between the four approaches. The objectives developed for that purpose are derived from the economic functions of security rights, the conditions for legal evolution and a transnational conception of justice.

For more information visit the publisher’s website.

Erasmus School of Law (under the ERC project Building EU Civil Justice) in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law Luxembourg, and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice (Utrecht University) hosts the seminar ‘Innovating International Business Courts: A European Outlook’ that will take place in Rotterdam on 10 July 2018.

In relation thereto Erasmus Law Review invites submissions for its upcoming special issue on International Business Courts – a European and Global Perspective on topics relating to court specialization, specifically relating to the development of international business courts in Europe and beyond, and focusing on justice innovation and their relevance for access to justice and the judicial system, including the challenges they may pose for judicial administration, litigants and other stakeholders. Contributions can be theoretical, empirical as well as policy oriented. Interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged. The issue will also include papers focusing on the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England and Wales), France, Germany, and Belgium, and deriving from the seminar.

Authors of selected papers will be exempt from registration fees for the seminar and will have the opportunity to present a poster during the drinks after the seminar.

Please submit an abstract in English of no more than 500 words to Erlis Themeli (themeli@law.eur.nl) and Alexandre Biard (biard@law.eur.nl) before 10 June 2018. Include your name, affiliation, and a link to your research profile. You will be informed on the outcome on 24 June 2018 at the latest. Responsible issue editors are Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam/Utrecht Utrecht) and John Sorabji (University College, London).

The final paper should be 8,000-12,000 words in length (including footnotes) and must comply with the Erasmus Law Review’s Authors Guidelines. Selected papers will go through the regular double-blind peer review process and publication is subject to the outcome of this review process. The deadline for submission of the paper is 1 October 2018.

For more information see the Call for Papers.

The Conference “Eurolanguage in Private International Law. Legislating, translating and  applying”, which will take place next June 14 in Tarragona, is an interdisciplinary forum for lawyers and scholars in the field of private international law, comparative law and private law to establish fruitful discussions with scholars and practitioners in the areas of legal language and translation, with the personnel from international institutions, academics and professionals.

The aim is to reflect on the possible establishment and impact of a European legal language framed within the area of private international law (PIL). The ground rules of European PIL are enshrined in European regulations, but also directives, which are discussed in the legislative process using, a priori, the 24 official languages in a context of integral multilingualism. As a result, EU rules in 24 language versions are applicable in all 28 Member States.

The analysis will focus on the linguistic issues pertaining to drafting the EU rules; the tools, techniques, and problems in translating the linguistic versions of the rules; whether interlinguistic coherence is achieved; and the legal-linguistic issues the legal operators of Member States face when applying European rules on PIL norms coexisting with other rules of conventional and domestic origin.

Click here to access the PROGRAM .

Venue: Congress will take place at the Sala de Juntes of Universitat Rovira i Virgili Campus Catalunya. (information to get there is provided here)

PAPERS SUBMIT

Topics: The organizers invite proposals on several issues related to the general topic. Check “Call for papers” document on the congress website: http://www.dret-privat.urv.cat/jornades-i-congressos/eurolenguaje/

Formal requirements: 500-600 word-long abstracts and 5 keywords in a MS Word file.

Languages: Spanish and English.

Deadline and address for submissions: Proposals may be submitted until 21 May, 2018. Proposals should be sent to: mireia.eizaguirre@urv.cat, who will confirm reception.

Confirmation of acceptance and oral presentation: All authors will receive an email with the decision by 25 May, 2018: proposals may be accepted to be presented orally (10 minutes); accepted not to be presented orally; or rejected.

Publication: Accepted papers, presented or not, will be published in a collective volume as long as they are positively assessed in the relevant blind review.

REGISTRATION

Registration: authors of accepted proposal should complete registration by 8th June 2018. Registration will be valid after payment on a € 50 fee credited to the account number: BANCO BILBAO VIZCAYA, IBAN: ES9601826035450201605723.

SWIFT: BBVAESMMXXX. Proof of payment should be sent to: mireia.eizaguirre@urv.cat.

Following fierce consultations, deliberations and debates, a new law has been passed by the Hellenic Parliament on improving adoption and foster care procedures. The law introduces a new institution: The National Foster Care & Adoption Council, and contains provisions on the requirements and procedures for foster care, thus, enriching the existing landscape embedded in the Civil Code since 1996. It also establishes two national registries:  The National Registry of adoptive applicants and the National Registry of adoptions.

The bone of contention was however the ‘window’ opened by the new legislation under Article 8, i.e. the right of same-sex partners to become foster parents. After a couple of weeks full of tension in the press and the Parliament, the Government moved on and secured the necessary majority for passing the provision.

This is yet another step towards full equivalence of same-sex with heterosexual couples. It was preceded by the introduction of same-sex partnerships in 2015, as an aftermath of the country’s condemnation by the ECHR in the Vallianatos ruling. Still, same-sex marriage is not, and will seemingly not be allowed for quite some time in the future, given that the Supreme Court has ruled out this possibility end last year.

Finally, it should be noted that Greece has recently enacted  legislation allowing the out of court dissolution of marriage in mutual consent, and abolished the compulsory application of Sharia law for Greek Muslims.

The IACPIL (Interdisciplinary Association of Private International and Comparative Law) and the University of Vienna invite to a lecture by Prof. Budzikiewicz (in German).

Whereas private divorces were mostly executed outside Europe, nowadays Italian, French as well as Spanish law allow a contractual divorce. The lecture addresses to what extent private divorces can be valid outside the enforcing state. The recognition can be relevant in different cases, e.g. another marriage is aspired or legal questions concerning the right of maintenance, tax law as well as law of succession arise.
The CJEU recently ruled that the Rome III regulation is not applicable to a marriage divorced by a spiritual court in a third country. In this respect the lecture focuses on how private divorces are to be treated with regard to private international law and international procedural law.

The flyer can be found here

Where: University of Vienna, Juridicum, Schottenbastei 10-16, 1010 Vienna, SEM 20
When: 17 May 2018, 6 p.m.
The event is free but registration is required (office@igkk.org).

William J. Moon has published an article titled “Regulating Offshore Finance” on SSRN. It can be accessed @ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3153121.

The abstract is reproduced below:

From the Panama Papers to the Paradise Papers, massive document leaks in recent years have exposed trillions of dollars hidden in small offshore jurisdictions. Attracting foreign capital with low tax rates and environments of secrecy, a growing number of offshore jurisdictions have emerged as major financial havens hosting thousands of hedge funds, trusts, banks, and insurance companies.

While the prevailing account has examined offshore financial havens as “tax havens” that facilitate the evasion or avoidance of domestic tax, this Article uncovers how offshore jurisdictions enable corporations to evade domestic regulatory law. Specifically, recent U.S. Supreme Court cases restricting the geographic scope of federal statutes have created a space for commercial actors to circumvent regulation by incorporating in offshore jurisdictions. Under this jurisprudence, financial transactions completed through offshore commercial entities are often, albeit not categorically, seen as “extraterritorial” transactions beyond the reach of federal statutes. This makes it increasingly difficult for private litigants to bring statutory claims designed to protect the workings of the market, even in cases that are predominantly connected to the United States. After documenting how offshore jurisdictions enable commercial entities to opt out of federal regulatory statutes, this Article critiques the Supreme Court’s recent extraterritoriality jurisprudence that risks breeding a cottage industry of private regulatory evasion.

The Department of Legal Studies of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and Jeantet & Partners (Paris) are organising a conference on: “The New Hungarian Arbitration Act – Views from Hungary and Abroad” on 17 May, 2018, 12:30pm – 6:30pm. The conference will be followed by a cocktail reception. This event will bring together arbitration experts from ten jurisdictions and seeks to provide a forum for discussion of the recently enacted new Hungarian Arbitration Act. It aims to inform participants of the most significant legislative changes and their practical implications. Particular emphasis will be put on a comparison of the new Hungarian Act with the arbitration laws of other jurisdictions. The organizing committee consists of Markus Petsche, Associate Professor, Department of Legal Studies, CEU; Ioana Knoll-Tudor, Partner, Jeantet & Partners, Paris; Davor Babic, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb; and Csongor István Nagy, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Szeged. For more detailed information regarding the conference program and registration, please click here.

Christopher Whytock (Professor of Law and Political Science, UC Irvine) has published a number of interesting papers offering broad perspectives on the conflict of laws.

One is on conflict of laws and global governance and questions how conflict of laws contributes to transnational legal ordering: Whytock, Christopher A., Conflict of Laws, Global Governance, and Transnational Legal Order (March 14, 2018). UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational, and Comparative Law, Vol.1, 2016; UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2018-16. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3140886

The other is on the interaction between conflict of laws and international law: Whytock, Christopher A., Toward a New Dialogue between Conflict of Laws and International Law (March 21, 2018). American Journal of International Law (AJIL) Unbound, Vol. 110, 2016; UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2018-22. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3145220.

A revised Preliminary Explanatory Report on the Judgments Project in both English and French is now available via the Hague Conference website.  This Report has been drawn up (and revised) by Professors Francisco J. Garcimartín Alférez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain and Geneviève Saumier, McGill University, Canada.

A track-changes version of the Preliminary Explanatory Report has also been made available. See in particular the amendments contained in paragraphs 201-224 in relation to intellectual property rights, which is a subject that has been somewhat controversial. Other important additions are the declarations with respect to judgments pertaining to governments (see paragraphs 344-352) and the declarations with respect to common courts (such as regional courts, see paragraphs 353-360).

A Special Commission on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments will be held on 24-29 May 2018 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The agenda is available here. It is envisaged that a Diplomatic Session (i.e. a high-level negotiation with a view to adopting a final text) will be held in mid-2019.

Please note that the meetings above-mentioned are open only to delegates or experts designated by the Members of the Hague Conference, invited non-Member States and International Organisations that have been granted observer status.

(This Report is provided by Dr. Jie (Jeanne) Huang, Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales Faculty of Law)

The recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Animal Science Products, Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, concerns what weight should be given to the Chinese government’s submission of Chinese law. On Page 58 of the trial transcript, Justices Kagan and Ginsburg asked how about other countries dealing with formal submissions from the Chinese government. There are two examples.

One is Hong Kong. In TNB Fuel Services SDN BHD v China National Coal Group Corporation ([2017] HKCFI 1016), the issue is whether the defendant, a state-owned enterprise, is protected by Chinese absolute sovereignty immunity under Chinese law. The court deferred to an official letter provided by the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Department in Mainland China. The Office answers no absolute sovereignty immunity to Chinese state-owned enterprises carrying out commercial activities. The Court adopted this opinion without second inquiry (para 14 of the judgment). After considering a bunch of other factors, the court ruled against the defendant.

The other is Singapore. In Sanum v. Laos ([2016] SGCA 57), the issue is whether the China-Laos Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) shall be applied to Macao Special Administrative Region. Chinese embassy in Laos and China Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided diplomatic announcements indicating that the BIT shall not be applied to Macao. However, the Court of Appeal of Singapore held that China’s announcements were inadmissible and, even if admitted, they did not change the applicability of the BIT to Macau. This is partly because, before the dispute with Sanum crystalized, no evidence showed that China and Laos had agreed that the BIT should not be applied to Macau. Therefore, the China’s diplomatic announcements should not be retroactively applied to a previous dispute. For a more detailed discussion, please see pages 16-20 of my article.

TNB Fuel Services and Sanum share important similarities with Animal Science Products, because the key issues are all about the proving of Chinese law. In the three cases, Chinese government all provided formal submissions to explain the meaning and the applicability of Chinese law. However, TNB Fuel Services and Sanum can also be distinguished from Animal Science Products, because comity plays no role in the former two cases. TNB Fuel Services concerns sovereign immunity, which is an issue that Hong Kong courts must follow China’s practices. This is established by Democratic Republic of the Congo v. FG Hemisphere Associates (FACV Nos. 5, 6 & 7 of 2010). Sanum is a case to set aside an investment arbitration award, so the Court of Appeal of Singapore need not consider comity between Singapore and China. In contrast, in Animal Science Products, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit elaborated the importance of comity between the U.S. and China. Therefore, Animal Science Products should not be considered as a technical case of proving foreign laws. The U.S. Supreme Court may consider deferring to the submissions of Chinese government to a certain extent but allows judges to decide whether the Chinese government’s submission is temporally consistent with its position on the relevant issue of Chinese law.

France is a state. France.com, by contrast, is a domain name, and it was, until recently, owned not by the French state but instead by a Californian company, France.com, Inc. That conflict is now being litigated in a fascinating dispute  reminiscent of the early days of the internet.

In those early days, in 1994 to be precise, a French-born individual living in the United States, Jean-Noël Frydman, registered the domain name France.com. The domain name is now held by a Californian company, France.com Inc, which Frydman set up. The website, at first dedicated to general information for Francophiles around the world, was later expanded to operate as a travel site. But France.com, Inc, did not, it appears, own trademarks in Europe. This enabled a Dutch company, Traveland Resorts, to register French and European word and graphic marks for France.com in 2010. In 2014, France.com, Inc brought suit in France against Traveland for fraudulent filings of trademarks and achieved a settlement under which Traveland transferred the trademarks.

But that was a Pyrrhic victory. The French state and its own travel development agency, Atout,  intervened in the litigation, claiming the trademarks for itself instead. Atout had been running, since 2010, its own information site, france.fr. French state and Atout were successful, first before the Tribunal de Grande Instance, Paris , and then, partly, on  appeal before the Cour’ d’appel de Paris (English translation, note by Alison Bouakel)  As a consequence, web.com transferred the domain in 2018. Now, France.com immediately directs to France.fr.

So far, the conflict is mostly a French affair. But Frydman is taking the litigation to the United States. France.com, Inc has brought suit in Federal Court in Virginia against the French State, Atout, and against Verisign, the authoritative domain registry of all .com addresses.  The suit alleges cybersquatting, reverse domain hijacking, expropriating, trademark infringement, and federal unfair competition. US courts and WIPO panels have so far not looked favorably at foreign government’s claims for their own .com domain name; examples include PuertoRico.com, NewZealand.com, and Barcelona.com. Will the French State be more successful, given the French judgment in its favor?

Although neither the French courts nor the complaint in the United States address conflict of laws issues, the case is, of course, full of those. Are the French state and its travel agency protected by sovereign immunity? The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act contains an exception for commercial activities and is limited to sovereign acts: Does ownership of a domain name constitute commercial activity? Surely, many of the activities of Atout do. Or is it linked to sovereignty? After all, France is the name of the country (though not, ironically, the official name.) The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit left the question open in 2002 (Virtual Countries, Inc. v. South Africa, 300 F.3d 230).

Must the federal court recognize the French judgment? That question is  reminiscent of the Yahoo litigation. Then, a French court ordered that Yahoo.com could not offer Nazi paraphernalia on its auction website. Yahoo brought a declaratory action in federal court against recognizability of the judgment in the United States. The affair created a lively debate on the limits of territorial reach in internet-related litigation, a debate that is still not fully resolved.

Relatedly, did the French state engage in illegal expropriation without compensation? Such acts of expropriation are in principle limited to the territory of the acting state, which could mean that the French state’s actions, if so qualified, would be without legal effect in the United States.

To what extent is US law applicable to a French trademark? By contrast, to what extent can the French trademark determine ownership of the domain? Trademarks are a perennially difficult topic in private international law, given their territorial limitations; they conflict in particular with the ubiquity of the internet.

Is the top level domain name – .com, as opposed to .fr – a relevant connecting factor in any of these matters? That was once considered a promising tool. But even if .fr could in some way link to France as owner, it is not clear that .com links to the United States, given that it has long been, effectively, a global top level domain. On the other hand, most governments do not own their own .com domain. And US courts have, in other cases (most famously concerning barcelona.com) not doubted applicability of US law.

A timeline with links to documents can be found at Frydman’s blog site.