Activities

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATIONS

Prof. Dessemontet has extensive experience in the area of international commercial arbitration, having been appointed to over 75 international arbitral tribunals. His practice is best exemplified by mentioning the subject matter of some recent cases: joint ventures in the area of satellite production and exploitation, telecommunications in Western and in Eastern Europe, transfer of technology, software production and licensing, publishing contracts, highway construction, distributorship agreements in the pharmaceutical, railroad and automotive industries, financing transactions, taking over of banking institutions, enterprise insurance, sale and lease of aircrafts, international sale of varied goods such as fertilizers, sale of turn-key production facilities, exploitation of gaz pipelines and oil fields, and construction of derricks. Many cases dealt with extra-European markets, such as the U.S., Latin America, Middle East and Far East.

Prof. Dessemontet has also served in a dispute resolution panel of the World Trade Organization in a dispute DB 176 between the U.S. and the European Union concerning the law of trademarks.

Prof. Dessemontet has an extensive experience in the area of domain names, having been appointed to more than 60 WIPO administrative panels under the Uniform Name Dispute Resolution Policy, and having successfully worked as mediator in ten litigations in this area.

LEGAL OPINIONS

Prof. Dessemontet has written over the years hundreds of legal opinions, most of them recently for international arbitral tribunals or parties in international arbitration proceedings. Topics range from the interpretation of contracts under Swiss law, French law, German law or the law of one of the U.S. States to conflicts of law in industries as diverse as textile industry, small electronics, software licensing, aluminum industry, worldwide sponsoring of major sports events, rules and by-laws of a major sport organization, site restrictions in chemical licensing, unfair competition and enticing away the whole team of a private bank. His opinions also deal with ultra vires signatures of contracts, bills of exchanges and checks, the termination of agreements, and intellectual property: copyright, trademarks, patents, geographic denominations, designs, domain names.

SCHOLARSHIP

Prof. Dessemontet is working with the American Law Institute, of which he is a member, and for which he served as reporter on the now completed project Principles for Transnational Intellectual Property Disputes: Conflicts of Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Recognition of Foreign Judgments. He serves as Reporter for the UNIDROIT Working Party on the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, in Rome concerning the future chapter on termination for just cause. Prof. Dessemontet currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Institute CEDIDAC in Lausanne which he founded in 1985, which specializes in continuing legal education and research in business law and intellectual property. He prepares a new edition of his Handbook of Intellectual property and several articles, for example on "declaratory actions in intellectual property cases", and "transborder Litigation in Intellectual Property cases".