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Abstract: The purpose of this article is to reassert the primacy of each state’s territorial jurisdiction as a fundamental basis for resolving international IP disputes. It identifies the principle that I have elsewhere termed the “territorial independence of IP laws” as specially relevant to the problems of parallel imports and cross-border IP infringement, and it explains how the proper application of the territorial independence principle resolves IP disputes in a manner that avoids running afoul of international law, maintains the integrity of basic U.S. principles of statutory construction, and remains consistent with the various federal statutes protecting IP rights. The territorial independence principle arises from the basic doctrine of international law that states have primary prescriptive jurisdiction with regard to their own territories, and this has important implications for how IP laws should be interpreted in multinational IP disputes.
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