Mar 25 2008
debates on international arbitration, 5/2, santa monica
The California State Bar International Law Section is co-hosting an event with the International Centre for Dispute Resolution: the third annual California International Arbitration Conference. This year’s title is “Decision 2008 – Debates on International Arbitration”. It is scheduled for Friday, May 2, 2008, from 8:30am – 5:15pm, and will be at The Doubletree Guest Suites in Santa Monica, CA.
Here is a little about the program:
The arbitration of disputes arising from cross-border transactions and relationships is a highly topical issue, having engendered in recent years significant discussion in the secondary sources. Moreover, entertainment disputes often involve questions of intellectual-property and technology law that remain of interest to virtually every California practitioner from San Diego to Silicon Valley, and to Hollywood inbetween. The 2008 conference will address each of these key areas of international arbitration practice.
Last year’s conference, which focused on the resolution of disputes in the Pacific Rim, succeeded in bringing together some of the world’s leading practitioners from China, Japan, Singapore, Canada, the United Kingdom, and, of course, the United States. This year’s diverse and equally distinguished faculty, which will include key industry representatives as well as preeminent practitioners, will provide attendees with insight into trends and developments in international arbitral law generally and into the resolution of international entertainment disputes in particular.
And the keynote presentations from the program are:
Session I: Star Wars – Whether to Arbitrate or Litigate International Disputes
So-called entertainment disputes in reality cover a wide range of areas, from talent contracts to real property transactions to film financing agreements. This panel of experts will address the costs and benefits of moving international commercial disputes and entertainment disputes, to the extent such things exist, from national court systems to international arbitral bodies.
Session II: Hollywood to Bollywood – Arbitration Means Different Things to Different People
The second panel will consider whether advocacy and decision making styles differ from continentto- continent or even from country-to-country, identify perceived differences, and debate which styles may be most effective in an international arbitration proceeding.
Session III: Copycat – How to Protect Your IP Overseas
Effectively protecting copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents can prove difficult under the best of circumstances and becomes all the more challenging when that intellectual property takes its way across borders. The third session will consider the role international arbitration can play in meeting that challenge, addressing, among other things, the arbitrability of intellectual property disputes, the availability of interim measures in arbitration, and the enforceability of IP related arbitral awards.
Session IV: The Big Fix – Problems and Ethical Challenges In International Arbitration
The fourth and final session of the 2008 California Arbitration Conference will address potential improvements to the current systems of international dispute resolution in the areas of arbitrator ethics, conflicts of interest, discovery, non-signatory involvement, confidentiality, and case management issues.
The list of speakers includes attorneys and mediators from the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, India. Brochure for the program is here, and you can register here. The program is also worth 6.5 hours of MCLE credit.
The lunch session is actually being by Kenneth Starr, former Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, former Solicitor General of the United States, current Dean of Pepperdine Law School, and author of the infamous Starr Report from the Whitewater days. Should be interesting… and perhaps even entertaining.
