Hunting the standard of compensation – intellectual property, Chorzów Factory and investments: a response

Abstract

While the debate on intellectual property and international investment law is relatively young, the role of historical cases will be important in offering some interpretative analysis. Due to the niche nature of both areas of law, where, often times, the legal luminaries found in both areas often speak past each other, in an earlier issue of this journal I offered an interpretative history of Chorzów Factory as an example of early case law by an international court illustrating the origins of the ISDS involving intellectual property. As with any interpretation, there are bound to be opposing views or explicit endorsement, but whatever the merits, that interpretative history has initiated a debate in the pages of this journal. That debate is in part, a response to my original analysis, to which I offer a response. This response is to endorse the fact that additional information has come forward that will enrich the debate on Chorzów Factory and its connection to intellectual property. Moreover, this response argues that the reply misses the point regarding the formal connection of international law to intellectual property in ISDS, a connection that I attempted to demonstrate through the example of the Chorzów Factory case – where a legal fight in the 1920s over nitrate, other chemical production and ownership still continue to be of relevance to international law.