Since the Japanese government recently unveiled a plan to release radioactive water into the ocean, the neighbouring countries have expressed concerns. In particular, certain environmental groups claimed that the execution of this operation would have a significant impact on the marine environment in the region. In light of significant potential risks, this article argues that such an operation is likely to trigger an international dispute at an international court or tribunal for several reasons. Accordingly, this article would like to explore the highly likely international litigation. First, the background of this potential international litigation, including the reasons why the operation may end up at an international court or tribunal are addressed. Subsequently, certain legal and factual issues that are expected to be contested between the parties at the court or tribunal are discussed. Finally, this article discusses some of the expected outcomes of this likely international litigation, including reparation.

IP litigations over mobile digital devices are soaring in many jurisdictions. Based on the observation that the same or closely related infringement claims over the IP rights embedded in a single digital product have been raised in multiple jurisdictions, some literature and legislative proposals suggest that an international jurisdiction over such litigations are necessary. This article aims to explore practical roadmaps to establish public international “conflict of laws” that can serve administering IP dispute resolution among MNCs. The author will start by reviewing both public international laws on IPRs including the Paris Convention, PCT, the Geneva Convention, the TRIPs, and their private counterparts. Institutional aspects of the WTO and the WIPO administering such as public international IP laws will also be examined. Agreeing with the proposed idea of establishing ‘public’ private international IP laws, this article will propose a more practical roadmap to establish time and cost efficient IP dispute resolution mechanism: the IP5 Collaboration Model.

There has been a sudden surge in simultaneous legal disputes between Samsung and Apple in domestic courts of multiple States since 2011 concerning patent infringements involving their new digital products. The intensity of these confrontations between the two digital giants has come to exert significant influence over the lives of many people all over the world. In a sense, they are not competing to protect or increase the market share in a given domestic market, as other large corporations usually do; rather, they are now competing in a single, integrated global digital market where borders and boundaries have virtually disappeared. The emergence of the dominant digital entities is a showcase example of the increasing role of the MNCs in the international community, an issue that has already attracted a significant amount of attention from scholars of international law. At the same time, the unprecedented clash between the two corporations in multiple jurisdictions also raises an important issue of how conventional jurisdictional principles under international law are and will be implicated in this regard.