ILO Staff

The US District Court Decision on .IR Domain Names

Gist of the News
According to the Tower Magazine on June 29, 2014:
On Tuesday the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to seize Iran‘s internet domain (.ir) and IP addresses in order to recover more than $1 billion in damages that the Islamic Republic owes for its sponsorship of global terror.

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Biotech Law of Iran, The Need for a Comprehensive Law

Introduction
Let us start this News & Analysis with the following paragraph taken from Céline Lafontaine‟s book titled „Le Corps-Marché‟ published by Édition du Seuil in April 2014 (at page 246):
“Un article du Monde intitule »Médicament: épidémie de pénuries«, paru en novembre 2013, tirait la sonnette d‟alarme sur le fait que la course aux profits qui gouverne l‟industrie biopharmaceutique a maintenant des répercussions directes sur l‟accès aux traitements pour certains patients au sein même des pays développés.”

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Interim Deal between 5+1 and Iran

Introduction
One of the most complicated fields of law is the law of sanctions. It would be almost impossible to handle the legal issues related to the sanctions imposed on Iran without understanding the existing and the invented interactions between the international law, the EU law, the US law, and the law of Iran. We have tried to look at few aspects of these interactions in this News & Analysis.

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Branches and Rep Offices in the Law of Iran

Executive summary
Since 1931 when Article 4 of the Corporate Registry Act of Iran recognized two distinct legal forms for activities of foreign companies in Iran, namely establishing a branch office or appointing a representative, all of the Iranian laws and regulations have remained loyal to this dichotomy as if no other option exists. Even the new Commercial Code of Iran (2014) could not succeed in creating a modern business law for regulating the activities of foreign companies in Iran.

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International Commercial Contracts

New development
The number of international companies that are either negotiating, or planning, or at least considering a return to the Iranian market is increasing. Sooner or later, foreign companies need to initiate the process of negotiating an agreement with their Iranian counterparts. In that case they have to respond to few difficult questions: What are the crucial issues of concern during the negotiation process? Later, when the parties start the process of drafting their agreement(s), what are the key issues that the foreign party must take into consideration? What are the legal sources of international commercial contracts in the Iranian legal system? Is there any specific law that determines the limits of the contract law of Iran? How the laws of Iran interact with its jurisprudence? Would it be necessary for a foreign party to learn about Sharia rules, as far as international commercial contracts are concerned?

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Joint Venture & the Law of Iran

Where two or more persons, whether natural or juridical, put together their assets to start a business activity in order to reap the benefits and to avoid the losses, they form a joint venture. Due to complexity of joint ventures, on the one hand, and strong desire of the partners to a joint venture to agree on every aspect of their venture, on the other, it is necessary that the partners found their relationship on a well-drafted and sufficiently detailed joint venture agreement.

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Foreign Corporations in the Law of Iran

Executive summary
The term “foreign corporation” is composed of two parts: corporation, and foreign. To understand the real and actual sense of these two terms in the law of Iran, we need to explain how, why and when these two concepts came to existence, lived their life, and finally took their current shape in the legal environment of Iran. After getting to know about their history, we need to look at what they actually are. This requires that we explain their legal functions in the socio-economic context of Iran. These functions, in their turn, are subject to the laws and regulations of Iran

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New Commercial Code of Iran

New development
The number of economic laws of Iran is very limited. A major reason for this shortcoming is that the general principles of the civil and commercial law of Iran are believed to respond to all possible questions in the field of international trade and economic law. In other words, the Civil Code and the Commercial Code of Iran are considered by majority of the Iranian lawyers as jus communes of the Iranian legal system. This understanding in its turn is based on a basic rule of Islamic law that fiqh (teachings of Sharia) shall respond to all legal queries forever.

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