- the act of establishing or acquiring a foreign subsidiary over which the investing firm has substantial management control’ (Keith E. Maskus, “Rights in Encouraging Foreign Direct Investment and Technology Transfer“, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, 1998, p. 109)
- Company A with patents merges with Company B, which has no patents, so the merged Companies own the patents of A.
- see e.g. swaps in life sciences industries (GSK/Novartis), “The Life Sciences Asset Swap Opportunity, Difficult to achieve but worth the effort?” KMPG Ireland 2018.
- is someone who holds a patent for a product or process but has no intentions of developing it.
- The Diplomat, “Mapping China’s Investments in Europe. The last eight years have seen a paradigm shift in Chinese investments in Europe“ (March 2019)
- In The Netherlands in 2018 a new law was proposed and sent to the Council of State (Raad van State) (“Wetsvoorstel Ongewenste zeggenschap telecommunicatie“) to protect telecom companies from “unwanted” foreign investments or takeovers).
- like the assumption that the Chinese Government was behind the stealing of lithography know-how (trade secrets) whereas no proof was there for such an allegation, according to ASML.
- see an OECD document “Acquisition- and ownership-related policies to safeguard essential security interests New policies to manage new threats” a research note on current and emerging trends, prepared for participants in an OECD conference on this subject, held on March 12, 2019, Paris, France).
- https://www.csis.org/events/putting-firrma-practice-what-cfius-reform-means-foreign-investment-united-states
- The Information Society, An International Journal, Volume 32, 2016 – Issue 4
- Winston & Strawn, “Foreign Investment and Acquisitions: CFIUS Considerations for Deals in 2018“, April 2018.
- The United States Studies Centre, “Deal-breakers? Regulating foreign direct investment for national security in Australia and the United States“, July 2018.
- For an overview of FDI legal arrangements in UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, see: The Law Reviews (UK), “The Foreign Investment Regulation Review – Edition 6“.
- Rasmussen Global, “Foreign Investment Screening and the China Factor, “New protectionism or new European standards?“.
- Allen & Overy, “German government lowers FDI screening threshold for certain industries“ (2018), no “intellectual property” mentioned though.
- BDI (The Voice of German Industry), “Investment Screening in Germany and Europe” (March 2019).
- https://www.ipeg.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/UK-consultation-paper-FDI_Highlighted-by-IPEG-1.pdf
- Art 4 (2) TEU: “(…) In particular, national security remains the sole responsibility of each Member State“
- Bird & Bird, “Screening of FDI – EU and national developments“ (Brian Mulier, Goran Danilovic, Dick Ignacio). See also Loyens Loeff (Ewout J. Stumphius and Wouter Kros), “European Parliament approves framework for screening of foreign direct investments into the EU”.
- emphasis added
- the only time “intellectual property and public order – or “ordre public” – was mentioned in one breath was in the Case C-38/98, Renault v. Maxicar [2000] ECR, I-02973, in application of the Brussels Convention of 1968 (now transformed into Regulation 44/2001) in which Italy was prevented from using its public policy exception not to enforce a French judgment, where the French decision had condemned an Italian company for violation of French rules on intellectual property, although Italian law considered the activity at stake as perfectly legal
- see for increased US scrutiny of Chinese FDI into the US: New York Times, “In new slap at China, US expands power to Block Foreign Investments“
- Foreign Investment Review, January 2019