Latest blog articles

On the 4^th of April 2018 - in Strasbourg the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a groundbreaking recommendation concerning children of imprisoned parents.

The recent ECJ’s judgment identifying Uber’s activities as transport services can be seen as a victory of the taxi sector against new business models. It affects the future of the platform economy in Europe by providing that certain composite services fall under the regulations governing the...

Nowadays, companies let consumers ‘play’ with their trademark: in the ‘Your Nutella – your way’ campaign the customer is invited to create his name label on a Nutella jar in the classic design of the Nutella logo. Nevertheless, there is an enhanced risk of trade mark dilution.

An international working group has engaged in a project to create an international arbitration mechanism for business and stakeholders to resolve issues in the field of business and human rights. This may enable business to live up to its corporate responsibility to respect human rights thereby...

The urgent transition to low-carbon energy systems requires massive investments and international cooperation. Yet chances of collaboration and exchange are growingly difficult in a context where trust is in short supply. How can we understand (dis)trust patterns in this complex domain?

Turkey has never been governed by the rule of law. This simple fact, long known to political dissidents, members of ethnic and religious minorities, and progressive legal scholars in Turkey, has finally started to be publicly acknowledged by the international community. But, this acknowledgment...

The United States is threatening the multilateral trading system with a World Trade War - a combination of aggressive unilateral trade restrictions and a wilful disabling of the rules-based dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Other WTO Members must unite around a...

On the 8^th of December 2017, Mr. Matthijs Geuze, who worked for the WIPO Secretariat during the negotiations of the Geneva Act, held an expert lecture at Maastricht University on the International Registration and Protection of Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications in the light of the...

How do we explain a decision made by a machine-learning algorithm? Do works of art created by artificial intelligence enjoy copyright protection? If intelligent games gather data of their users, who is liable if users are harmed by such games?

Trust in the legal system of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has promoted an historic global expansion of trade and investment. That trust is at risk of erosion. The evolutionary role of complexity may hold the key to understanding why.