نشریه حقوق تطبیقی (نامه مفید)
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار و تابستان 1394)

Record gasoline prices and outright shortages in certain areas of American territories over the summer of 2000 and beyond have made the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (“OPEC”) into the public enemies. As in the past, Congress and the public have turned to antitrust for a solution. If antitrust is unlikely to be a successful weapon against domestic and international oil companies, OPEC once again becomes an inviting target. Never a popular entity with the American public, OPEC epitomizes in the public perception a greedy rapacious international cartel preying on the American public in defiance of the tradition of market competition embodied in the Sherman Act. Then why not unleash the full power of the federal private treble damage litigation (perhaps class actions as well) against a group of foreign nations acting against American interests? In this article the aim is to scrutinize the potential actions against OPEC in American courts and how uch inciting Immunity, based on rules of international law, of OPEC member states as a defense could be effective in these courts.

The differences between modern legal literature and Fiqh literature, in some cases, suggest that, for the purpose of presenting Fiqh & Islamic Law in some academic circles other than traditional Islamic ones, the rich content of the Islamic fiqh, while protecting its originality, should be presented in modern legal language so that it could be better digested and understood by the its intended audience.For this purpose, in this article, having briefly explained the “conflict of laws” in contemporary private international law, the author has tried to deal with one of its major issues, namely, "possibility or necessity of the application of foreign law" from Islamic jurisprudential perspective to establish that Fiqh is not silent in this regard and has "the Rule of Elzam" as a "Rule for resolving the conflicts", at least in the area of private law, especially for the personal status matters and establishes that, the scope of this rule is not limited to its main basis, namely, intra-religious legal relations and actions, and to some extent, it includes inter-faith and international legal relations and cases.

Based on the Articles 37 and 40 of Convention on the Rights of the Child, States Parties should determine the minimum age of criminal responsibility for children in accordance with their physical, mental and intellectual conditions. In this regard, as an exception, according to the article 37 paragraph A concerning unpardonable capital punishment and life imprisonment, setting 18 as the age for criminal responsibility is necessary. Of course, the execution of the children below eighteen years of age, had already been forbidden, according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which has been adopted by Iran, too.In accordance with the above mentioned conventions, and by codifying article 91 of the Iranian new Islamic penal code (adopted in 2013) the Iranian legislator has in a way acknowledged the necessity of criminal discernment being taking into account in execution of the children under 18 so that this could provide a possibility for the judge to avoid execution sentences for children under 18. Therefore, examining the issue from the Islamic and Iranian law perspective and its conformity with the international documents, is very important and thus it is the focus of this study.

In today’s economic environment, two kinds of trademarks have been acknowledged with reputation that also entails different protections. The first type concerns popular trademarks recognized by the relevant sector of the public and protected based on traditional law of trademarks. The second kind concerns famous trademarks recognized by the general society and protected under the dilution entity. In Iranian law, only popular trademarks are protected and the famous trademarks are not recognized and protected. However, popular trademarks are not defined and their distinguishing criteria are not mentioned. This article, applying comparative approach presents a definition and identifies criteria for popular marks, meanwhile famous marks are recognized and differences and similarities between these two types of marks and supporting doctrine specific to each case will be examined.

In the relations between the indebted and debtor, sometimes a third person is indebted to the debtor and the debtor can claim his debt but he fails to do so or intentionally refuses to do so. The debtor’s failure to file a case against the third person causes loss for his (the debtor’s) creditors. To prevent the loss for the creditors’ loss and to protect them in this regard, the legislators in some countries including Egypt and Lebanon have made some laws which provides the possibility for the creditors to vicariously take a legal action against the debtor (third person) sometimes indirectly and sometimes directly. In Iranian legal system direct and indirect actions have been provided for in a very limited way and under special circumstances which have to be taken into account and recognized within the framework of law.

Software protection is provided not only through droit dauteur (copyright) and patent system but also by the trade secrets system. In Iranian legal system, article 65 of electronic trade law 2003 considers the software information as trade secret. This protection needs the observation of three elements: secrecy of information, economic value and reasonable information protection. The method of application of these three elements to software has the particularities that cannot be found in other areas protected by trade secrets. Finally, the vast economic value of the same software necessitates contractual mechanisms that follow the special principles to avoid disclosure of information.

With the passage of time, rulers came to realize that coming into power, is not possible without the people’s support and a state cannot survive without popular support and people’s support cannot be obtained unless the rulers hold themselves accountable to the people. It was then that the theory of responsibility replaced the theory of absolute immunity. Therefore, today we speak of the scope and different aspects of civil liability and how it has to be addressed not it’s necessity or whether the state is responsible for all its harmful actions or it is only responsible for losses resulting from technical problems and administrative procedures. In this article, after explaining what let to the emergence of the civil responsibility of states, we will discuss it.

In European Union law, if lex loci damni has been accepted as the governing law to civil liability, such a choice is associated with specific economic analysis which justifies the competency of the law with respect to lex loci delicti or lex fori or interests analysis theories. The mentioned law enforcement could be analyzed in two different areas, cross-border and interstate torts both of which could be further discussed based on national and international economic aspects. In Iranian law, economic analysis related to the choice of governing law in inter-state torts, matches with the European law. But in cross-border torts, lex loci delicti is confirmed as a general rule because of necessities of an internal economy.