WTI sponsors the Moot Court of the European Law Students Association (ELSA)

The Final Oral Round of the ELSA moot court competition 2009-10 (emc2) took place in Santo Domingo from 24-30 May 2010. The 16 winning teams from the regional rounds in Leuven, Helsinki, Adelaide, Taipeh, Sao Paolo and Ottawa and from the International Written Round had a very interesting case of ‘health security’ to argue: alleged intellectual property rights infringement for essential medicines between two free trade agreement partners. Christian Häberli, Senior Research Official at the WTI/NCCR participated in the moot WTO Panel, along with academics, WTO Secretariat officials and two Appellate Body members. He also presented the WTI programmes, chaired a panel in the Academic Conference on ‘Regional Trade Agreements and the Fragmentation of International Law’, and talked about his experience as a ‘real life’ panellist in the WTO. Several participants - as well as trade lawyers from other universities acting as coaches - expressed a keen interest in the WTI’s teaching and research activities. The winning team from West Bengal University (India) was awarded tuition-free participation in the WTI’s Summer Academy, worth over 5’000 Swiss Francs.