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Choer Moraes, Henrique --- "Dealing with Forum Shopping: Some Lessons from the SECURE Negotiations at the World Customs Organization" [2009] ELECD 371; in Li, Xuan; Correa, M. Carlos (eds), "Intellectual Property Enforcement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Intellectual Property Enforcement

Editor(s): Li, Xuan; Correa, M. Carlos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446526

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Dealing with Forum Shopping: Some Lessons from the SECURE Negotiations at the World Customs Organization

Author(s): Choer Moraes, Henrique

Number of pages: 30

Extract:

8. Dealing with forum shopping:
some lessons from the SECURE
negotiations at the World
Customs Organization
Henrique Choer Moraes1

INTRODUCTION2
Forum shopping is a widely used tool in policy-making as a whole.
This is no less true in the domain of international intellectual prop-
erty rights (IP/IPRs), the history of the TRIPS Agreement3 being a
prominent example.4 Despite the challenges posed to international
governance by the proliferation of overlapping agendas, it is a fact
that countries seek amenable venues to push their interests. Since
there is no such thing as a clear-cut, stone-written division of labour
among international fora, to a certain extent convenience is the rule
that dictates where a given agenda is to be advanced. In this sense,
forum shopping is a by-product of the `anarchical' state that marks
international politics.
Of course, some forums could arguably be regarded as being
better positioned than others to host negotiations of certain issue
areas. This is due to a variety of reasons ranging from institutional
features ­ such as a specific perspective or expertise from which an
organization views a given subject ­ to the normative acquis of legal
instruments negotiated within the organization's framework. While
this does not by itself rule out the migration of issues to alternative
forums, pursuing an agenda in one organization that exhibits the
features mentioned above has the added value of legimitacy.
The expansion in the scope of intellectual property rules ushered
in by the advent of the TRIPS ...