Part IV Selected Issues for Further Study, B Intellectual Property, Betting the Family Jewels: Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (IP) rights often constitute a corporation’s key assets—its “family jewels” so to speak. Thus any dispute over these rights is usually taken very seriously. As a result, IP lawyers often have particularly strong feelings with respect to the relative costs and benefits of arbitration related to patents, trademarks and copyrights. While arbitration clauses frequently find their way into technology licenses (particularly in a cross-border context) the wisdom of this practice has been vigorously debated. Ironically, the alleged drawbacks to...