National industrial strategies for building critical technologies challenge the scope of ‘national security’ in international intellectual property (IP) protection. National security provisions in the WTO are traditionally considered in the military context or ‘an emergency in international relations’ where actions are necessary to safeguard countries’ essential security interests. However, it does not reflect the security issues emerging from new digital technologies. On the other hand, many recent Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have expanded the scope of national security to include cybersecurity-related measures. The speaker investigates the legal solutions that aim to tackle the unpredictability and instability created by selected trade measures based on national security and other non-economic objectives in international intellectual property protection. These measures include trade bans on the export and import of digital technologies and blocking investments to prevent the diffusion of intellectual property. In order to ensure inclusivity and participation of civil society, the speaker proposes a broad scope of national security to encompass cybersecurity and a multistakeholder model for governing critical technologies.  

Link to the academic paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jwip.70021
Link to the briefing paper: https://citp.ac.uk/publications/national-security-and-intellectual-property-protection-of-critical-technologies

About the Speaker:

Phoebe Li is Professor in Law and Technology, Director of the Sussex Centre for Law and Technology (SCLT) at the University of Sussex in the UK.  She works on regulating emerging technologies in international multi-disciplinary research projects funded by national governments and international organizations. She is Co-Investigator in the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP, funded by the ESRC, 2022-2026) and the Online Platform Regulation in Brazil and the UK (funded by the British Academy’s ODA Challenge-Oriented Research Grants 2024-2025 Programme, provided under the UK Government’s International Science Partnerships Fund). She is a member of the UN ITU/WHO/WIPO Global Initiative on Artificial Intelligence for Health (GI-AI4H), working with the Intellectual Property and Regulatory sub-working groups. She is also a member of the IEEE Standards Working Group on Recommended Practice for Ethical Considerations of Emulated Empathy in Partner-based General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Systems (P7014.1).