The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 8: Lawfare)
Phuah Eng Chye (5 November 2022)
Historically, world orders were primarily shaped by physical force – military, commercial and industrial. Post-WW2, the forces shaping the world order shifted from the physical to information. For several decades, the US emerged as the dominant superpower – with dominance in both the physical and information domains. They fostered a unipolar world order by building a coalition of nations that prospered under its umbrella. The unipolar order was remarkable in achieving consensus among friends and even “enemies” on the essential role of laws, the private sector and markets to build an advanced society. Convergence to this view fostered decades of relative stability, peace and confidence in global relationships.
As barriers to flows fell, the diffusion of information, production and finance underpinned the spread of global prosperity. This distributed economic power which, in turn, undermined the stability of the unipolar world order. The GEW signals the global reset has begun – a transition from a stable unipolar world order towards an unstable multipolar world. Rising powers are demanding a greater voice. Rather than accommodate these demands, the US are leading allies to impose conditions to remain a member in the “Western” world order; and risking fragmentation by excluding non-compliant countries. There is conflict and competition across multiple fronts – military, trade, technology, finance, health, logistics, data and media and in multilateral forums, oceans, airspace, cyberspace and outer space. Deglobalisation is deepening with trade, capital, information and labour flows diverted to re-circulation within spheres. Nations are increasingly resorting to perhaps their most lethal soft power weapon, namely lawfare.
The rise of lawfare
The pillar of Western soft power was the primacy of Anglo-Saxon laws and judicial institutions in the “liberal rule-based” international order. It was a precondition to participating in the economic prosperity unleashed by “liberal rule-based” globalisation. The West enjoyed first-mover advantage in establishing international norms. Nonetheless, developing countries generally felt the global governance system was “unequal” and skewed in favour of developed countries and their MNCs.
As an example, Manuel Perez-Rocha relates Pakistan’s efforts to terminate 23 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) that allowed corporations to sue governments in unaccountable supranational tribunals. In 2019, “a tribunal (three private judges behind closed doors, to be clear) of the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Pakistan to pay an Australian mining company $6 billion in compensation for denying a mining permit on environmental grounds…The ICSID ruling concluded that Pakistan had violated a BIT with Australia by failing to provide Tethyan fair and equitable treatment, a vaguely worded obligation that corporate plaintiffs love to exploit. The tribunal also decided that denying the license for Tethyan’s Reko Diq gold and copper project was tantamount to indirect expropriation – never mind the fact that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had ruled the permit invalid because the company had violated national mining and contract laws. ICSID’s response was to order Pakistan to draw billions of dollars from its public coffers to compensate Tethyan for their lost expected future profits. The company had only invested about $150 million in the project. Khan’s government went to great lengths to reverse the decision, highlighting that the $6 billion ICSID award alone represented about 2 percent of its GDP, or 40 percent of its cash reserves in foreign currency. The government argued that international tribunals must realize that their decisions have an impact on state policies, including poverty alleviation. But the U.S. District Court, responsible for enforcing the ICSID ruling, declared that Pakistan’s hopes of annulling the award were nothing more than wishful thinking.” Due to its dire economic conditions, “Pakistan had no choice but to give in to this concerted attack by financial institutions and international courts and the world’s second-largest gold mining company…a settlement…allow the company to resume their controversial Reko Diq mining project…a disturbing example of international investment treaties’ chilling effect on environmentally responsible policies and public interest regulations”. Mexico was “sued by the U.S. mining company Odyssey Marine Exploration for $3.54 billion. Filed before the ICSID in 2019 under the terms of NAFTA, the suit challenges Mexican authorities’ decision to deny a seabed mining permit to extract phosphate (used for fertilizers) in the Gulf of Ulloa…The Puerto Chale Fishing Cooperative had strongly opposed the project, on the grounds that their members’ livelihoods depend on the marine areas and seafloor that Odyssey is intent on dredging. After the company retaliated by bringing a claim to ICSID, the Fishing Cooperative and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) attempted to submit an amicus curiae brief to share their concerns. They also argued that the decision by Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) to deny the exploitation permit was consistent with the precautionary principle recognized in national and international law. The ICSID tribunal refused to admit the brief”.
Despite the dissatisfaction, developing countries accepted the Western-dominated legal order as a fair price of entry. In recent years though, the West has increasingly weaponised its laws to achieve geopolitical goals. This was accompanied by the aggression of activists and courts eager to superimpose their values and reach across countries. In the meantime, developing countries had grown in economic stature and no longer appeared willing to subordinate their interests nor tolerate extraterritorial incursions into their jurisdictions.
The GEW represents a breaking point because sanctions and asset seizures were imposed unilaterally without regard to international laws. China and Russia have adopted a two-pronged response. First, they have filed lawsuits to challenge and test Western application of their laws. Second, they have weaponised their laws and legal systems to counter Western extraterritorial reach. Henceforth, lawfare is no longer one-directional – deployed by the West against developing countries – and major battles are expected to erupt in the legal realm.
There are various interpretations of lawfare[1]. Colonel Charles Dunlap describes lawfare as a method of warfare where law is used as a means of realizing a military objective”. In recent years, lawfare “has been associated with the spread of universal jurisdiction, that is, one nation or an international organization hosted by that nation reaching out to seize and prosecute officials of another”. Benjamin Wittes argues lawfare “refers to the sharply contested legal debates in the U.S. surrounding national security, and national security law…The name Lawfare refers both to the use of law as a weapon of conflict and, perhaps more importantly, to the depressing reality that America remains at war with itself over the law governing its warfare with others”. In this context, “the Lawfare Project argues lawfare is exclusively negative, defining it as the abuse of Western laws and judicial systems to achieve strategic military or political ends…lawfare consists of the negative manipulation of international and national human rights laws to accomplish purposes other than, or contrary to, those for which they were originally enacted”.
The rise of lawfare thus reflect the increasing weaponisation of laws for geopolitical defence and counter-attack. For example, Jeannette Chu notes “in June 2021 China enacted a new Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, creating a legal apparatus for censuring foreign companies and individuals for implementing or complying with the sanctions of a foreign power when those sanctions adversely affect Chinese citizens or otherwise interfere in China’s internal affairs…the broad scope of the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law…Chinese and non-Chinese individuals and their relatives alike could find themselves blacklisted and subject to civil suits for complying with foreign sanctions that are viewed as causing harm to Chinese parties…The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law follows the Ministry of Commerce’s publication of China’s Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extra-territorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures (January 2021) and joins other recent legislative actions that appear to mimic measures long used by other countries, especially the United States…In September 2020, China established a mechanism for an Unreliable Entity List for designating foreign companies deemed to be acting inimical to China’s interests, followed by enactment of its own Export Control Law…codified an administrative and enforcement framework for regulating controlled items, including technology, and articulated provisions for export licensing and reexport controls…Nuances in the interpretation of U.S. export control regulations have long challenged trade compliance practitioners and their advisers; the broad strokes of China’s laws leave room for even greater concerns over consequences that could have catastrophic effects on cross-border trade. The capriciousness with which other national security laws have been applied in China further increases nervousness among foreign parties. Taken together, these regulations form countermeasures that, on the surface, appear similar to the European Union’s blocking regulations in seeking to mitigate the impact of foreign sanctions and extraterritorial reach of export control regulations. The timing of China’s actions reinforces perceptions of the retaliatory nature of these efforts. Should the United States find itself needing to impose secondary sanctions on Chinese companies, it is not difficult to envision an equally assertive response from China’s political leadership. To be clear, full implementation of China’s blocking laws has not taken place. It would be naïve to think, however, that these countermeasures would not be invoked or continue to evolve, even if no additional new sanctions or export controls are imposed on China or Chinese entities”.
Jeannette Chu notes “the use of export controls and sanctions as unilateral and plurilateral foreign policy tools has become more frequent and complex. In the United States, heightened attention on reexport/retransfer and end-user/end-use controls has given rise to an intricate regulatory regime that is a boon, perhaps, to lawyers, consultants, and advisers, but nonetheless challenging for companies that must ultimately understand their changing risk profile and maintain compliance. As the United States continues to exploit the extraterritorial reach of its regulations, the growing threat of a regulatory arms race, particularly with China, adds to an already jittery business environment. The tit for tat nature of export controls and sanctions today risks undermining the effectiveness of export controls and leaving policymakers with limited options”.
Battle over patents
As the intense battle for technological leadership unfolds, one of the most critical battlegrounds relates to ownership claims on innovation. Yang Yu and Jorge L. Contreras notes “courts in the U.S. and UK adjudicating cases involving standards-essential patents and FRAND licensing commitments have increasingly issued injunctions preventing one party from pursuing parallel litigation in another jurisdiction (anti-suit injunctions or ASIs). In response, courts in other countries – namely Germany and France – have begun to issue anti-anti-suit injunctions (AASIs) to prevent parties from seeking ASIs that would hinder their own proceedings. And even anti-anti-anti suit injunctions (AAASIs) have emerged as more than theoretical possibilities. Amidst this international jockeying for jurisdiction, commentators have wondered where it will end, and whether every country involved in complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes will get into the ASI game”.
Yang Yu and Jorge L. Contreras points out “in two recent cases, China has now stepped forward as another major jurisdiction in which ASIs are available to litigants. The ASIs issued by Chinese courts in Conversant v. Huawei and InterDigital v. Xiaomi signal a new willingness of Chinese courts to vie for jurisdictional authority in global battles over standard essential patents. To some degree, this development was entirely predictable. Courts in the U.S. and UK have, for several years, sought to resolve global FRAND disputes being litigated on the international stage. But there is no reason that U.S. and UK courts should be the exclusive venues for such proceedings. The courts of every country in which the parties have sufficient assets to care about adverse rulings can exert similar authority…this inter-jurisdictional competition is rapidly leading to a race to the bottom and a race to the courthouse in international FRAND disputes. Yet even more seems to be at play…The ruling of the Wuhan court is far broader…First, its geographic scope is not limited to the country in which InterDigital sought injunctive relief (India), but extends to all jurisdictions in the world. As an anti-suit measure, this is more sweeping than any ASI issued in U.S. or other courts in FRAND cases. Under U.S. and UK law, a court considering a request for an ASI must compare the action in the domestic court with the parallel action in the foreign court and determine whether they address the same matter and whether the resolution of the domestic action would dispose of the foreign action. This type of analysis is not possible with an ASI that is not directed to a particular foreign action, but prospectively prohibits any attempt to seek an injunction anywhere in the world. The second major addition by the Wuhan court is the prohibition on InterDigital’s ability to ask any other court in the world to determine a global FRAND rate for its 3G/4G patents. As such, China has clearly joined the international race to be the jurisdiction of choice for determining FRAND royalty rates in global disputes involving standard-essential patents”.
Angus Milne notes “in July 2021, the EU expressed its concerns…via the procedures of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in a request for information pursuant to Article 63.3 of the TRIPS Agreement. The request contained various questions, including regarding China’s approach to anti-suit and anti-anti suit injunctions, and daily fines for non-compliance, as well as China’s adjudication guidelines for deciding on such matters and the legal basis for doing so. China’s response…to say that, in its view, it is not obliged to respond to the EU’s request for information…did not provide answers to any questions about China’s approach to anti-suit and anti-anti suit injunctions. Instead, China asserted that, in its view, it is acting in full compliance with the TRIPS Agreement and any further questions or concerns should be raised directly between the EU and China through existing bilateral channels (rather than through the WTO). With China having rejected the WTO dialogue, it appears that the bilateral talks referred to in China’s response represent the only realistic avenue for arresting the current escalation in SEP anti-suit injunctions. To be effective in resolving issues of overlapping jurisdiction, such talks would inevitably also need to incorporate the views of other countries whose national courts are actively engaged in SEP litigation (particularly the courts of the UK and US). This would involve significant complexity in attempting to reach a compromise between the differing approaches currently adopted by those courts. As such, it appears inevitable that a solution is a long way off. In the meantime, both SEP owners and SEP implementers will need to be alive to the additional complexity and cost caused by anti-suit injunctions in SEP litigation”.
Angus Milne argues on “the need for a political solution to the escalating use of anti-suit injunctions in standard essential patent (SEP) litigation. But they also demonstrate how far away such a solution appears to be”. “One approach to resolving such overlapping jurisdiction between two or more national courts is for one court to issue an anti-suit injunction. In essence, this is a court order which seek to prevent a litigant from bringing or continuing with legal proceedings in the national court of another jurisdiction in relation to overlapping issues…However, rather than resolving issues caused by overlapping jurisdiction, the use of anti-suit injunctions has instead led other national courts to resort to competing injunctions to protect their jurisdiction. This has led to increasingly complicated injunctive orders…InterDigital applied to the Munich Regional Court, which ordered that Xiaomi was prohibited from enforcing the anti-suit injunction and the anti-anti-anti-suit injunction granted by the Wuhan Court (i.e. an anti-anti-anti-anti-suit injunction).
Angus Milne points out “the increased deployment of anti-suit injunctions is a trend which causes problems for both SEP holders and SEP implementers. There are tactical advantages available to parties who are first to file, in obtaining anti-suit injunctions, which may encourage a rush to court for potential litigants. It is also likely to encourage forum shopping by parties seeking to utilise the differing approaches adopted by national courts to issues of SEP infringement and FRAND determination. The tactical advantage of an anti-suit injunction may be offset to some degree by the counterbalancing impact of anti-anti-suit injunctions (and other variations), albeit courts vary in their approach to granting these remedies. However, SEP holders and SEP implementers will still need to be aware of the potential additional complexity and cost involved in SEP litigation. Moreover, the use of anti-suit injunctions raises issues for policy makers about the system of international patent enforcement. Anti-suit injunctions (and their variations) are a risk to the comity between national courts. They also impact upon a patentee’s right to judicial protection for its property”.
The jurisdictional conflicts are also being viewed through a geopolitical lens. Andrei Iancu and Paul R. Michel regard the Chinese courts use of ASI as an attempt “to prohibit American courts from adjudicating American patents for technologies”, “an alarming new affront to American sovereignty” and “an attempt by China to control the U.S. judiciary and to determine how much U.S. innovation is worth”. “Recently, Senators Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Tom Cotton, Mazie Hirono, and Rick Scott have introduced the Defending American Courts Act, which would level the playing field by penalizing any party that seeks to encroach on the sovereignty of American courts through the use of a foreign anti-suit injunction. Specifically, this bill would bar any party involved in a patent dispute who is trying to enforce a foreign ASI in an American court or the International Trade Commission from mounting a validity challenge against the disputed patent at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If the party was found to have infringed that patent, they could also be forced to pay enhanced damages and the other side’s legal fees. The bill would also require the USPTO to publish a study examining the impact of these anti-suit injunctions”.
Patent recognition is now divided among geopolitical lines. The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) halted cooperation with the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) and the Eurasian Patent Organisation (EAPO) – that grant Eurasian patents covering Russia and several ex-Soviet republics. In contrast, Aaron Wininger notes the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) “is extending Eurasian Patent Organization Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot project for another year through March 31, 2023…The PPH enables accelerated examination of Chinese patent applications based on an allowance of an earlier-examined patent application”.
Taken to the extreme, patent rights can be suspended across jurisdictions. Enrico Bonadio and Alina Trapova notes “in March 2022, the Russian government issued a decree saying that Russian companies are no longer obliged to compensate owners of patents, utility models and industrial designs from unfriendly countries…that have issued sanctions against Russia…This means that Russian businesses can use intellectual property, such as patented inventions or fashion designs, without having to pay or seek the consent of the rights holders. Affected companies cannot enforce their patents and designs against Russian imitators. This effectively legalises intellectual piracy in a country already known for failing to adequately protect intangible assets”. “Russian officials have hinted that other intellectual property rights owned by western countries may be soon restricted, including software and trademarks”.
Enrico Bonadio and Alina Trapova point out “the suspension of intellectual property rights as an economic weapon in the context of a conflict is unprecedented, at least in recent decades. Historical examples date back to the first world war, when the US introduced the Trading with the Enemy Act. This act seized copyright and patents owned by enemy countries, including the patent to aspirin, famously a German invention. Following the war, the Aspirin trademark owned by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer was given up to the US, France, UK and Russia, as part of Germany’s war reparations agreed in the Treaty of Versailles”.
Enrico Bonadio and Alina Trapova notes Russia’s suspension of patents and other intellectual property rights owned by western companies are in violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and “countries damaged by the Russian measure may bring Russia to a WTO court and ask for additional sanctions to be imposed”. Russia could justify its measure based on WTO security exception that “allows countries to take any action they consider necessary to protect their essential security interests in times of war. But it has never been invoked by any state in the context of an armed conflict, and therefore never tested”. In any case, Russia is already heavily sanctioned and in the event that it is expelled from the WTO, it would no longer be obliged to conform to the WTO rules.
Global drivers and implications of lawfare
There are several drivers of rising geopolitical conflict in the legal realm. First, the informationalisation of society[2] has led to a massive expansion in rules; i.e. information overload tends to be accompanied by regulatory overload. New rules are required for the vast array of innovative and disruptive technologies (AI, IOT, blockchain, metaverse), products and industries (devices, drones, autonomous cars) and activities (sharing). While the scope for defining physical crime is limited (theft, murder), the scope for defining information misconduct appears limitless. Infringements and liabilities can be defined in relation to privacy, disclosure, usage, accountabilities, access, and ownership. More rules, more lawsuits and rising liabilities increase the pressure to continuously expand legal documentation. Overall, this sharply increases compliance requirements, legal risks, potential liabilities and bureaucracy costs. The expansion of regulatory scope increases the likelihood of jurisdictional overlap and disputes at the international level.
Second, information effects[3] such as transparency, polarisation, santisation, complexity and convergence make for fractious societies. Knowledge and sophistication to game the legal system abounds. In the meantime, lawmakers, agencies and courts respond to public pressure by expanding their jurisdictional scope to cover a broad range of issues such as human rights, labour, climate change and national security and competitiveness. There is a huge increase in compliance requirements and penalties, outsized fines are imposed, individuals are arrested and assets seized across jurisdictions. In an informationalised society, regulators and enforcers find it expedient to prosecute on information or procedural failures (tax evasion, omitting or providing false information, and failure to comply) than to prove actual wrong-doings. The penalties for information become onerous if the “wrong-doings” are linked to a serious crime like money laundering or national security.
Third, rising lawfare can be viewed as an integral aspect of the broad backlash against globalisation, technology and MNCs. Implementation based on whole-of-government approaches means that laws are the main vehicle used to achieve populist, nationalistic and security objectives. National laws are now fashioned like missiles aimed at adversaries and their abettors.
Fourth, unsurprisingly rivals like Russia and China have caught on, and now use law to justify their actions or counter-actions. Russia and China have recognised the importance of the “rule of law” but insist on sovereignty of their laws and courts. New centers for legal arbitration will likely emerge to compete with London and New York. An escalation in legal conflict is looming as the authority of US and European laws and courts are challenged by other countries.
Five, laws and judgements may not be borderless but enforcement is. Cross-border enforcement will be a major area of conflict. Alfred McCoy notes given the “failure of Western sanctions against Russia to stop the war, the international courts have become the sole peaceful means left to still the conflict…two major international courts have already ruled against Russia’s invasion, issuing orders for Moscow to cease and desist its military operations…the U.N.’s highest tribunal, the International Court of Justice…the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)”. Yet, “to enforce the decision, the court notified the Council of Europe, which, two weeks later, took the most extreme step its statutes allow, expelling Russia after 26 years of membership. With that not-terribly-painful step, the European Court seems to have exhausted its powers of enforcement”. He points out ECHR could also enforce “the European Convention on Human Rights…the ECHR could order Russia to pay Ukraine compensation for the war damage it’s causing. Unfortunately…there is no international police or international military force that can support any international court judgment”. In this regard, seizing a Russian or Chinese vessel or assets is a quite different proposition from seizing an Iranian and Venezuelan one. In this context, if a country is excluded from a legal sphere, cross-border enforcement breaks down and, as more countries are involved, this will lead eventually to a breakdown in international governance arrangements.
Sixth, lawfare shrinks international safe space and the supply of safe assets. The unilateral actions to freeze Russia’s assets and to block its physical, logistical, financial and information access to the West emphasises “safety” is now geopolitically conditional. This is problematic as laws work best when they are perceived to unconditionally and fairly protect property (i.e. patents, claims, agreements) and rights (i.e. governments, companies and individuals). The trend towards two-way lawfare – whether through vindictive sanctions, extraterritorial laws and court judgements based on national security concerns – undermines legal certainty and threatens the sanctity of international space and assets; including for third countries and MNCs.
Lawfare has massive consequences. In this regard, laws set legal boundaries and therefore defines the breadth and depth of fragmentation. Countries may choose to expand extraterritorial reach, withdraw recognition of some countries and associated legal rights, and erect barriers to cross-border flows (of goods, services, capital and information). A “national” approach to rule-making is likely to lead to clashes on international law and norms. Thus, lawfare will have a large role in scoping geopolitical spheres with the likelihood that access to information, rights and obligations, and legal reach may not be enforceable across different jurisdictions.
As legal frameworks and jurisdictional interpretations diverge, as era of global litigative chaos lies ahead. The private sector would need to cope with different laws, standards and processes. Not only could laws be in conflict, but administration and court rulings could differ. It will cast doubt on the veracity of bilateral and multilateral treaties among governments. Fragmentation will undermine confidence in cross-border administration, enforcement and judicial decisions. Policy, compliance and legal uncertainties make it expensive, and sometimes even impossible for businesses to comply and this will feed into risk aversion. In the face of rising legal uncertainties and government interference, the private sector is likely to shift from formal or legal risk-taking towards informal or illicit activities. This is because there is more money to be made, on the margin, from arbitrage, smuggling, evasion, avoidance and piracy than there is from legal activities.
Conclusions
Once tightly-coupled countries are finding it difficult to co-exist. Lawfare will define the terms of the economic divorce. The problem is that lawfare is being used to legitimise asymmetric warfare and its effects can be more lethal than most military campaigns. In a recent development, lawfare is being aimed at inter-governmental organisations. The US is threatening to pass the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) Act to revoke the sovereign immunity protecting Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) from lawsuits. Alex Kimani notes “it remains unclear exactly how a U.S. federal court could enforce judicial antitrust decisions against foreign nations, not to mention that other countries could retaliate by taking similar action on the United States”. The geopolitical stakes would be raised if lawfare is used to formally extend claims on disputed territories, expropriate foreign assets or to target foreign governments and multilateral organisations.
A total breakdown in the international legal system will have horrific consequences. Imagine the chaos. A multitude of legal actions freezing international relationships and activities. The invalidity of existing treaties and commercial agreements; non-recognition of ownership (including patents), creditworthiness (debt claims) and conflicting court rulings. The damage on the global economy will be immense. Non-recognition of each other’s legal jurisdictions is perhaps just one step away from triggering military confrontation.
The existing global governance system will break down if superpower behaviour is no longer restrained by international rules or norms and dispute resolution mechanisms are ignored or bypassed. The world will then revert to the law of the jungle, a world based on reciprocity, friendship and muscular strength. Without legal certainty, the world order will not be stable and it will definitely not be prosperous.
It is not possible to completely eliminate cross-border interactions in a modern information-based global economy because it is highly interdependent and reliant on global public goods. Powerful countries need to achieve mutual understanding to accommodate each other’s jurisdictional rights and to resolve international disputes. A new legal model to reset the rules of the global game is critical to prevent lawfare from degenerating into a free-for-all that could tip the world into a destructive military confrontation.
References
Alex Kimani (6 October 2022) “The radical plans to counter high oil prices”. Oil Price. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/The-Radical-Plans-To-Counter-High-Oil-Prices.html
Alfred McCoy (25 April 2022) “How to end the war in Ukraine”. Originally published at TomDispatch. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/04/how-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine.html
Andrei Iancu, Paul R. Michel (6 April 2022) “The solution to Chinese courts’ increasingly aggressive overreach”. Real Clear Policy. https://www.csis.org/analysis/solution-chinese-courts-increasingly-aggressive-overreach
Angus Milne (1 October 2021) “China stands firm: Developments in SEP Anti-Suit Injunctions”. Haseltine Lake Kempner. https://www.hlk-ip.com/news-and-insights/china-stands-firm-developments-in-sep-anti-suit-injunctions/?utm_source=Mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=LinkedIn-integration
Aaron Wininger (9 March 2022) “USPTO cuts ties with the Eurasian Patent Organization, China National Intellectual Property Administration extends them”. National Law Review. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/uspto-cuts-ties-eurasian-patent-organization-china-national-intellectual-property
Enrico Bonadio, Alina Trapova (18 March 2022) “How Russia is using intellectual property as a war tactic”. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-russia-is-using-intellectual-property-as-a-war-tactic-179260
Jeannette Chu (25 March 2022) “The new arms race: Sanctions, export control policy, and China”. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-arms-race-sanctions-export-control-policy-and-china
Manuel Perez-Rocha (18 April 2022) “Ousted Pakistani leader, Imran Khan, was challenging investment treaties that give corporations excessive power”. Counterpunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/18/ousted-pakistani-leader-imran-khan-was-challenging-investment-treaties-that-give-corporations-excessive-power/
Phuah Eng Chye (2015) Policy paradigms for the anorexic and financialised economy: Managing the transition to an information society. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AWRAKJG
Phuah Eng Chye (7 November 2020) “Information rules (Part 1: Law, code and changing rules of the game)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/information-rules-part-1-law-code-and-changing-rules-of-the-game/
Phuah Eng Chye (21 November 2020) “Information rules (Part 2: Capitalism, democracy and the path forward)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/information-rules-part-2-capitalism-democracy-and-the-path-forward/
Phuah Eng Chye (5 June 2021) “Global reset – Two whales in a pond”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/global-reset-two-whales-in-a-pond/
Phuah Eng Chye (30 July 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 1: The beginning)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-1-the-beginning/
Phuah Eng Chye (13 August 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 2: Strategic concepts and implications)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-2-strategic-concepts-and-implications/
Phuah Eng Chye (27 August 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 3: The financial nuclear bomb)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-3-the-financial-nuclear-bomb/
Phuah Eng Chye (10 September 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 4: Battles reshaping the global monetary order)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-4-battles-reshaping-the-global-monetary-order/
Phuah Eng Chye (24 September 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 5: Global economic breakdown and monetary disorder)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-5-global-economic-breakdown-and-monetary-disorder/
Phuah Eng Chye (8 October 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 6: Geopolitics, monetary policy challenges and the collapsing tripod)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-6-geopolitics-monetary-policy-challenges-and-the-collapsing-tripod/
Phuah Eng Chye (22 October 2022) “The Great Economic War (GEW) (Part 7: Global depression and deglobalisation)”. http://economicsofinformationsociety.com/the-great-economic-war-gew-part-7-global-depression-and-deglobalisation/
Yang Yu, Jorge L. Contreras (5 November 2020) “Will China’s new Anti-Suit Injunctions shift the balance of global FRAND litigation?” SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah. https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1245&context=scholarship
[1] This paragraph’s comments are drawn from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare
[2] See Information rules (Part 1: Law, code and changing rules of the game); (Part 2: Capitalism, democracy and the path forward).
[3] See Policy paradigms for the anorexic and financialised economy: Managing the transition to an information society.