O presente trabalho aborda, da perspectiva do ordenamento jurídico brasileiro, a cláusula de eleição de lei nos contratos internacionais. Para isso, dividimos este estudo em três partes. Na primeira, tratamos das premissas fundamentais do nosso objeto. Na segunda, abordamos especificamente a escolha de lei no Brasil. Na terceira, versamos sobre as propostas de reforma da legislação brasileira e tecemos alguns comentários a título de conclusão. Na primeira parte abordamos (i) aspectos gerais dos contratos internacionais, (ii) o princípio da autonomia da vontade, (iii) os limites à aplicação da lei estrangeira e (iv) como a escolha de lei é disciplinada na Europa e nos EUA. Na segunda parte deste trabalho, examinamos a cláusula de eleição de direito aplicável de acordo com o sistema jurídico pátrio. Em seguida, estudamos a extensão da autonomia da vontade dos contratantes. Na última parte, em vista das conclusões obtidas nos capítulos anteriores, verificamos a necessidade de reforma da legislação brasileira para adequá-la aos padrões internacionais. / The purpose of this paper is to analyze, from the perspective of the Brazilian legal system, the choice of law clause in international contracts. We divide this work in three parts. In the first one, we examine some general important issues related to our subject. In the second one, we specifically discuss the choice of law according to the Brazilian law. In the last part, we examine some proposals to update the Brazilian legal system. In the first part, we discuss (i) general aspects of international contracts, (ii) the principle of party autonomy, (iii) limitations to apply a foreign law and (iv) how the choice of law is set forth in Europe and the USA. In the second part, we analyze the choice of law clause under Brazilian law. Afterwards, we investigate the extension of party autonomy. In the last part, due to the conclusions of the previous chapters, we verify the need for an update of the Brazilian legislation to meet international standards.

A presente dissertação versa a teoria geral da determinação da lei aplicável no Direito Internacional Privado, sob a ótica de parâmetros cosmopolitas colhidos em outras ciências humanas, em perspectiva interdisciplinar. Analisam-se vários estudos recentes sobre o cosmopolitismo, bem como suas origens remotas, de modo a propor possíveis relações do tema com o método conflitual do Direito Internacional Privado. No capítulo I, empreende-se estudo histórico, retornando às origens do cosmopolitismo (filosofias grega e romana), passando pelo cosmopolitismo de Kant, no séc. XVIII, para então, finalmente, examinar os cosmopolitismos contemporâneos. Quanto a estes, procede-se à uma taxionomia e se exploram algumas proposições teóricas de especial utilidade para a determinação da lei aplicável. No capítulo II, busca-se transpor o cosmopolitismo do plano das demais ciências humanas para o plano da teoria jurídica em particular. Analisa-se, primeiro, o que implica a ideia de cosmopolitização do direito e, após, a relação entre o cosmopolitismo e o Direito Internacional Privado em específico. Dá-se especial atenção à aplicação da ideia de justiça cosmopolita no contexto da determinação da lei aplicável. No capítulo III, trata-se dos três grandes métodos de determinação da lei aplicável (multilateralismo, unilateralismo e materialismo), em perspectivas histórica e crítica. Conclui-se que a adoção do multilateralismo enquanto estrutura principal de determinação da lei aplicável, flexibilizado pelo princípio da proximidade, atende mais à imparcialidade cosmopolita que os outros dois métodos. No capítulo IV, propõe-se uma visão cosmopolita do princípio da ordem pública, concentrando-se em duas importantes evoluções teóricas mais recentes: as noções de ordem pública de proximidade e de ordem pública verdadeiramente internacional. Procede-se, ademais, a exame crítico da aplicação da exceção da ordem pública, no que se refere à lei aplicável, na jurisprudência brasileira recente. Ao fim do estudo, as principais conclusões são enumeradas. / This dissertation addresses international choice of law, through the lens of cosmopolitan standards collected from other humanities, undertaking an interdisciplinary approach. Many recent studies on cosmopolitanism are examined, as well as its remote origins, so as to propose links between choice of law and cosmopolitanism. In chapter I, a historical study is undertaken, going back to the origins of cosmopolitanism (Greek and Roman philosophers), dealing moreover with Kants cosmopolitanism (18th century) and contemporary cosmopolitanisms. Accordingly, a division into categories is proposed and some theoretical notions of special importance to choice of law are tackled. In chapter II, cosmopolitan concepts are applied to legal theory. First, consequences are drawn from the idea of cosmopolitanizing law. Afterwards, the relation between Conflict of Laws and cosmopolitanism is addressed. The focus is on the application of the idea of cosmopolitan justice to choice of law. In chapter III, the three existing choice of law methods are addressed (multilateralism, unilateralism and substantialism), historically and critically. It is concluded that the adoption of multilateralism as a general framework, flexibilized by the principe de proximité, is a better option in terms of cosmopolitan impartiality than the other two methods. In chapter IV, a cosmopolitan vision of public policy is proposed, focusing upon two important theories recently conceived: the notions of ordre public de proximité and of truly international public policy. Also, a critical address of the recent application of the public policy exception by Brazilian courts (within the choice of law context) is made. At the end, the main conclusions are enumerated.

This Master's Thesis deals with the application of the concept of lex mercatoria in process of contracting process and in the dispute resolution, particularly in international commercial arbitration. The first chapter briefly describes the historical development of lex mercatoria and examines in detail the circumstances of the establishment of modern lex mercatoria . Further, the Thesis describes the general methods of regulation of the private relations with an international element. In connection with the use of lex mercatoria in the process of contracting the specific attention is given to the choice of applicable law by reference to certain rules of lex mercatoria. The criticism of such choice-of-law method is analysed, as well as its justification and also the requirements for the validity of such choice-of-law method. The second half of the Thesis is dedicated to a particular formalized rules of lex mercatoria, as well as to their legal grounds in Czech law, and also to some legislative changes in the Czech Republic after January 1, 2014, relevant to the lex mercatoria. The final chapter addresses the practical application of lex mercatoria in the international commercial arbitration. The chapter begins with a brief and general introduction to the international commercial arbitration....

The goal of this thesis is to analyze international license contract institute, the function and the position it occupies in the sphere of international business with incorporeal goods and legal regime which it, on the level of the Czech rule of law and European Union law, is subject to. The thesis consists of four parts. The first part focuses on the institute of contractual license in general. It outlines its conception and basic definitional framework. It reflects the function and the position which the institute of license contract occupies in the Czech rule of law as well as its shift within the framework of Czech private law recodification. It presents diverse typology of contractual license and in the process it thoroughly focuses on its modifications, respectively on marginal agreement models such as franchise agreement and know how agreement. The second part of the thesis continues with text dedicated to the institute of license contract with international element. It presents its general classification and it also analyzes sources of its modification. The third part of the thesis treats legal regime which the international license contract is subject to, and the focal point of the text lies in the union modification included in the Rome Convention and in Regulation Rome I. The problem is discussed...

The development of the United Nation’s Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) started at the beginning of the 20th century in order to provide a uniform legal regime for international sales contracts. The development started because of a belief that a uniform international sales convention would contribute certainty in commercial trade and decrease transaction costs for the contracting parties. The Convention was signed in Vienna 1980 and came into force in 1988 after securing the necessary number of ratifications. The CISG is automatically applied to international sale contracts in certain given situations but the contracting parties are free to exclude the Convention as applicable law in favour of another regulation. As of today, more than 25 years after the CISG came into force, the Convention is commonly being excluded as the governing law of international sales contracts. By studying surveys and academic writings, certain factors can be derived as reasons prior to an exclusion of the CISG. The factors can be referred to as unfamiliarity, time and costs, negotiation strength and standard form contracts or standard terms. Regarding unfamiliarity, the importance given to the Convention in law faculties within the signatory states, together with time and costs attributed to a familiarization process, seems to play an important role. Moreover, the Convention is associated with problems regarding a non-uniform interpretation of the Convention’s provisions within the national courts and arbitral tribunals, as well as regarding its incompleteness, meaning that there are gaps that need to be filled by national law. These problems affect the Convention’s ability to provide potential users with legal certainty and predictability, which in turn may affect the familiarity with the Convention and hence have an impact on an exclusion of the CISG.

Cyberspace produces friction when the law is implemented by domestic courts using 'state-laws'. These laws are based on a ‘physical presence’ of an individual within the territory. It elevates conflicts relating to cyberspace jurisdiction. This research examines private international law complications associated with cyberspace. The paradigm of libel that takes place within the domain of social media is used to evaluate the utility of traditional laws. This research is conducted using ‘black-letter’ methodology, keeping in mind the changes constituted by the Defamation Act 2013. It pinpoints that the instantaneous nature of social media communication demands an unambiguous exercise of 'personal-jurisdiction', beyond the doctrine of territoriality. An innovation to the code of Civil Procedure is recommended to revise the process of service for non-EU defendants. The permission to serve a writ via social networks (or to the relevant Embassy of the defendant’s domicile state), can accelerate the traditional judicial process. This thesis can be utilised as a roadmap by libel victims for preliminary information. It contributes to the knowledge by discovering that the thresholds under Section 1 and Section 9 of the Defamation Act 2013 overlap with the conventional ‘forum-conveniens’ tests. This crossover is causing legal uncertainty in the application of existing rules to the digital libel proceedings. Section 1 and Section 9 thresholds do not fulfil the purpose of eliminating ‘libel-tourism’ and maintaining a balance between speech freedom and reputation rights. They raised the bar for potential victims and restricted their rights to justice. It is proposed that the traditional ‘conveniens test’ must be used for social media libel victims to produce legal certainty in cyberspace defamation.

Charles University in Prague Faculty of Law Abstract of the dissertation The title of the dissertation: Sharia Law, particularly Islamic banking, in relations with international elements Author: JUDr. Ivana Hrdličková Supervisor: Prof. JUDr. Monika Pauknerová, CSc., DSc. Prague, February 2012 Key words: Islamic finance, sharia, mudaraba, musharaka, murabaha, ijara, sharia compliant, international law, choice of law, contract, riba, gharar, maisir. The dissertation, Sharia law, particularly Islamic Banking in the relations with international elements, considers an actual topic and branch of islamic law. Neither islam nor islamic law is a legal system applicable at any particular territory. However, legislation of the countries with majority of muslim population, is based, more or less, on islamic law. Whereas due to migration and globalization, islamic law unavoidably interferes in international law. The legal regulation of international private law under the terms stipulated by the law leads to the use of foreign law. One can thus meet the legislation based on islamic law, including in the field of contract law. In commercial contracts, where the one side is from countries where islamic law is a source of legislation, may be the choice of law (in accordance with article 3 of Rome I), which form's the basis...

Pour étudier le phénomène paradoxal d’un renforcement de l’autonomie de la volonté parallèlement à une multiplication des impérativités en droit international privé contemporain, le concept de norme permissive apparaît particulièrement pertinent. Il permet de saisir l’ensemble des énoncés normatifs où l’auteur de la norme octroie à un destinataire une faculté de faire ou de ne pas faire, qu’il s’agisse du juge lorsqu’il lui est permis de surseoir à statuer en cas de connexité ou des parties lorsqu’il leur est permis de choisir la loi applicable à un contrat international.L’étude du droit positif montre que les manifestations des normes permissives sont nombreuses, tant dans les conflits de lois que de juridictions et qu’elles obéissent à des logiques distinctes selon qu’elles octroient une faculté au juge ou aux parties. Dans cette seconde hypothèse, en effet, il n’est plus question d’une liberté octroyée par la règle de droit mais d’une liberté concédée dans le choix de la règle de droit. Cette spécificité, conjuguée à la multiplication des normes permissives en droit international privé, a donc justifié que leur efficacité soit éprouvée.Dans cette perspective, le présupposé selon lequel les normes permissives constitueraient une traduction normative adéquate de l’objectif de prévisibilité des solutions, qui sert de justification à leur admission, doit être remis en cause. L’appréciation critique de ce postulat permet de proposer que les normes permissives n’occupent, à l’avenir, qu’un rôle résiduel en droit international privé, soit comme instrument de consensus soit comme palliatif à l’indétermination d’un critère de rattachement suffisamment prévisible. / In order to study the paradoxical phenomenon of the rise of party autonomy in parallel with the multiplication of mandatory norms in contemporary private international law, the concept of permissive rule is particularly apposite. It accounts for all instances where the law-making body grants a beneficiary the possibility to do or not to do something; be it the judge when he is authorized to stay the proceedings in case of related actions, or the parties when they are authorized to choose the law applicable to an international contract.A study of the positive law shows that permissive rules are numerous in both Choice of laws and Jurisdiction and that they operate under distinct logics depending on whether they grant a possibility to a judge or to the parties. In the latter case, the issue at stake is no longer whether a right is granted by the legal rule, but rather whether a right is conceded in the choice of the legal rule. This specificity, together with the proliferation of permissive rules in private international law, warrants that their relevancy be tested.In this context, the assumption that permissive norms would adequately serve the purpose of foreseeability of solutions, which forms the basis for their adoption, must be questioned. This critical assessment leads to the proposal that permissive norms should, in the future, play only a residual role in private international law, either as a way to reach consensus or as a stopgap in the absence of a sufficiently foreseeable connecting factor.

Les règles de conflit de lois insérées dans les directives communautaires relatives à l'exercice des activités d'assurance offrent un exemple unique de règles de conflit étroitement associées aux objectifs du marché intérieur. L'examen de ces règles de droit positif insérées dans les directives révèle les orientations que le droit communautaire donne aux règles de droit international privé lorsque celles-ci sont perçues comme un enjeu du marché intérieur. Au plan de la théorie générale du droit international privé, ces règles de conflit rompent nettement avec le principe de neutralité de la règle de rattachement. Loin de se désintéresser du résultat atteint par l'application du droit désigné, elles intègrent au contraire des objectifs de droit matériel relevant tantôt de la nécessité d'intégration des marchés, tantôt des besoins de protection des assurés. Participant à l'achèvement du marché intérieur, ces règles s'inscrivent nécessairement dans une logique communautaire où les exigences de la libre circulation s'opposent à la nécessité de sauvegarder des intérêts généraux considérés comme légitimes, telle la protection des consommateurs. Transposée en droit international privé, cette tension constante entre deux objectifs contradictoires revient à opposer les mérites d'un rattachement fondé sur le libre choix de la loi applicable ou sur le lieu d'établissement de l'assureur, et ceux d'un rattachement à finalité protectrice basé sur la localisation du risque ou la résidence habituelle de l'assuré.

法院處理涉外標準必要專利之案件時，經常面臨國際管轄以及準據法適用的問題。涉及議題包含授權契約之成立與效力、專利侵權、違反競爭法等。本文先分析我國涉外民事法律適用法在智慧財產案件上之實務適用情形，認為目前涉外民事法律適用法第42條第1項應僅適用與智慧財產權利內容本身相關之爭議，智慧財產契約或侵權行為案件，則應適用契約與一般侵權行為之選法規則。 其次，本文透過研究日本、中國、韓國、美國、英國等國之標準必要專利案件，探討標準必要專利案件中，標準制定組織的智財權政策與F/RAND承諾，經常約定以標準制定組織所在地法為準據法，因此所生之授權契約爭議與競爭法爭議，包括法院是否有權管轄，以及應該如何適用之準據法。在與F/RAND相關之爭議裡，各國法院鮮少有拒絕管轄的情形。準據法方面，實務上基於當事人意思自主原則，適用標準制定組織之智財權政策與F/RAND承諾之準據法，判斷F/RAND承諾之性質，以及當事人間授權契約是否成立以及其效力為何。競爭法方面，實務上各國皆適用內國競爭法，以決定標準必要專利權人之行為是否濫用其市場地位。 經由比較法與實務案件之分析，本文主張標準必要專利之中基於F/RAND所生之契約爭議，仍應適用標準制定組織之智財權政策與F/RAND承諾中所約定之法律。適用涉外民事法律適用法部分，法院實務判決應更清楚明確定性案件以及適用涉外民事法律適用法之依據與理由，俾使涉外民事法律適用法第42條第1項之意義更為明確。競爭法之部分，由於其強行法規之性質，實務皆適用法庭地法，原則上僅就影響國內市場之涉外行為判斷。此外，就我國立法就智慧財產之國際管轄規定付之闕如，應該針對智慧財產之特殊性增加相關規定。 / In cross-border SEP-related cases, courts often face the problems of international jurisdiction and the choice of law. SEP-realted cases often involve issues such as the nature of the F/RAND declarations and the IPR policies of Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs), the formation and the effect of licensing agreements, and violation of competition law, etc. The thesis starts from the examination of Act Governing the Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements in Taiwan. Article 42(1) of the Act should be applied only to the issues related to the content of IP right itself. As for IP infringements and IP-related contracts, the choice of law rules on general infringements and contracts should be applied. Secondly, the thesis further looks into the practice of conflict of law in Japan Korea, PRC, the UK and the US on SEP-related cases, which mostly apply the principle of party autonomy to determine the nature of F/RAND declarations and the nature of SSOs’ IPR policies. As for the competition law argument, based on the mandatory nature of competition law, the court often applied lex fori to the issues. Back to the private international law in Taiwan, the thesis suggests that the court should elaborate more specifically on the process of the court determining the characterization of the case and further deciding the choice of law. Besides, Taiwan should also legislate the law on the international jurisdiction on IP cases.