دانشنامه حقوق اقتصادی
سال بیست و دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 8، پاییز و زمستان 1394)

In this paper, we focus on the new draft article 479 of the Commercial Code concerning single-member company and reviewed the legal perspectives of this matter. The reasoning, advantages and disadvantages, and necessary safeguards of this institution are investigated and through a comparative study the most important rules of acceptance of this type of company is reviewed. The terminology , ambiguities in the matter of establishing this type of company, its management and the order of responsibilities of single-member company are discussed. It is explained that single-member company is not limited to family companies or newly established companies, but also may involve the joint stock companies as well if meeting some criteria.
Moreover, essential elements (factors, aspects) for accepting Single-Member Company, as well as the advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) are discussed.
Single-member company is a type of company which has only one member either it is a limited liability company, or any other type of company. This company can be legally founded originally at the beginning of its establishment, or when all the shares of a company are transferred to one person/member and the number of the members/shareholders reduced to one.
In Islamic law each individual is responsible for his/her on debts and responsibilities and establishing a single-member company to shuffle off responsibility is against this law. This issue can be answered this way that the ruler already waived the aforementioned law by accepting the principal of limited liability and joint stock companies.
Founding a single-member company was in agreement with some votes in England before it was accepted by European Commission.
Establishing single-member company may be connected with some other legal institutions/organization which not taking these organization in account may hinder reaching a comprehensive overview on this matter, therefore, investigating this issues is also considered. In this paper it is assumed that accepting a single-member company, limiting its organization to a limited liability is not the case. This study was carried on by studying the accessible references. It is shown that accepting this type of company in Iran law should be through applying some safeguards and clarifying some ambiguities. The following conditions seem necessary to be considered in this matter:1- Accepting single-member company should be with respecting and providing the security of the third parties rights in order to minimize misusing and abusing. An important safeguard is piercing/lifting (looking or peeping behind the company, disregarding the corporate entity or personality) veil of company issue which accurate explanation of this issue is with high importance.
The doctrine of piercing the corporate veil facilitated holding directors liable for corporate debt. Nevertheless, the doctrine is not a separate cause of action. Directors are bound by fiduciary duty, duty of loyalty and duty of care and skill to the corporation and its shareholders. However, there is not such a contractual relationship between directors and creditors. Thus, requiring directors to compensate creditors should be justified on tort law. In the Iranian, French and American legal systems, fault-based liability is the cause of action for director's liability. The author found that in piercing cases, director's liability follows the traditional rules of fault-based liability unless specified otherwise by statute as strict liability.
2- Single-member company can be included public or private joint-stock companies, and limited liabilities companies with regard to the fact that the purpose of establishing these companies is to assets analysis partner (owner) single partner company is now considering a distinctive personality which only can be reached through the aforementioned companies. Hence, the new Commercial Code article’s point of view on the acceptance of single-member company in the form of a limited liability company can be criticized.
3- Considering the fact that granting permission on establishing single-member company have been considered by the legal system therefore, it is recommended that founding certificate for this type of company be restricted to government related companies, and if there would be a positive feedback after this trial, then the permission for individual can be granted. It is due to the fact that the third-party rights and public order requires that this issue be treated with great caution. For example, accepting this type of legal personality should be restricted to providing appropriate with the government bail; or the property of the owner and the company should be considered as one not as separate things (which is in opposition with limited liability). It is also important that the legal quorum of companies that lose their partners, to be considered. Therefore, it is suggested that if such a case occurred for limited liability or joint stock companies a proper recovery time is considered in the law.

Regulation is a modern concept which has emerged out of and evolved in the context of economic development in general and the relationship between market and government in particular. It signifies a different meaning with the past. Even nowadays we are faced with various meanings of regulation within the economic legal systems; meanings that have moved away from its early definition, and hence, it is necessary to make it clear what we mean by the term in our academic analyses. However, regulation is about managing the relationship between government and economy (especially the market); an issue with which legal and economic systems have grappled since the early days of industrial economy.
Market has always swayed between two theories of government interventionism and non-interventionism. It could be said that the idea of market dominated over the orthodox economy up to the 1929 crisis. With the outbreak of this crisis, the Keynesian theory found the upper hand in the economic systems, which defended government intervention in the monetary system and labour market. After three golden decades since the end of the World War II and along with the occurrence of the 1970s crisis, the idea of the market efficiency and necessity of reduction of the government intervention therein gained currency. In this situation, where the Keynesian theory had started to lose its prevalence, governments lost important monetary and fiscal instruments. Post-1970s era has increasingly necessitated determination of the state-market relationship.
Various economic schools and theories have taken shape in this era. Regulation is indeed one of the concepts with which theoreticians have grappled with. Some of the scholars in the field of regulation consider government as a preliminary example of intervention in the market, while some other take it as one among many intervening institutions. All of them, however, agree that the nation state and international regime are among significant and complementary elements to a functional economy and help the economic growth. Having taken into consideration the history of this era and the related theories, it may be concluded that nowadays there is no doubt about the necessity of government intervention in the market and economy. All in all, there is a consensus on this point that a lack of mechanism of managing the state-market relationship would harm all the actors involved in the field, a fact that finally damages the national interest, and causes serious economic and social losses.
In other words, the controversy now revolves around the boundaries of such an intervention and regulation of market by governments. Given the developments occurred over the 19th and 20th centuries, it seems that the state-market relationship is not of an absolute domination of government over market or a random and haphazard regulation of the institute.
The aim of regulation of market and economy – which requires government intervention in diverse ways, particularly by passing and enforcing laws and bylaws – is to enhance the efficiency and functionality of economy in various industries and jobs, on the one hand, and monitoring them with the purpose of helping correction their failures, such as environmental harms, risks exposed to the society and the labour, exploitative pricing, unfair competition, on the other hand. In this regard, in order for regulation to be effective and meet its aims, it is not only necessary to designate various meanings of the term at different levels, so that appropriate instruments may be selected for each level, it is also crucial to determine and know very well the scope and target of regulation in a precise way. No doubt, legal regulation, in both particular and sub-particular levels, can be effective by relevant sanctions.
At any rate, regulation implies various meanings and is of diverse levels. That is, regulation finds different meanings in different fields, and hence, requires different instruments. Therefore, in the first step, in this realm, we need to deal with the concept of regulation. On the basis of the above points, this essay, by briefly dealing with the history and necessity of regulation, aims to explain three meanings and level of the concept of regulation and existing approaches to the issue. To explain, from among various kinds of regulation, such as the social and cultural one, we only deal with the regulation of market, industries and jobs.
At the firs level, the general one, regulation means any enforceable social control.
At the second level, the particular one, regulation implies government intervention in the market system. At the third level, the sub-particular one, regulation signifies intervention in economy and market by legislation. It is clear that regulation in the second and third meanings relates to the relationship between government and economy/market. It is worth mentioning that, under the Iranian legal system, “Law of Implementation of General Policies of Article 44 of the Constitution” include the second meaning of regulation as it shows legal regulating of the economy by legislation. In contrast, directives or bylaws issued by the Competition Council and rules passed by the Organization of Radio Communication Regulation are instances of the third meaning of regulation.

There are many agreements for transferring technology, but license agreement is the most important agreement in this regard. According to the mentioned agreement, the owner of patent or technology as licensor grants the license to licensee in specific duration and in a given territory. Exclusive rights of licensor and the objectives of competition law, including the welfare of consumers or preventing monopoly in competition may create a challenge between exclusive rights of licensor and competition law. In other words, it is probable that imposing some restrictions on licensee in using the technology may result in distortion of competition in relevant market, reduction of competitors and prevention of new entrants to the market. On the other hand, the failure to maintain the security of innovation of inventor and the lack of its legal support will destroy the incentive of the creation of new technologies and finally lead to market failure and absence of competition. Therefore, licensing agreements can provoke more concerns of competition law. Rules and aims of competition law must order the economic policy in a community in such a way that provide welfare of consumers and at the same time, the competition in the market does not confront restriction and the monopoly or misuse does not occur. On the other hand, in licensing agreements, intellectual property rights are accompanied by some kind of exclusivity which can allow the owner to impose some restrictions on the licensee. Although the exclusivity of intellectual property rights is desired, it should not endanger the welfare of consumers and aims of competition law. The restrictions on licensee could be price or non-price restrictions. The price restrictions are the ones that their subject is relevant to price or they directly affect the price of products in the market. However, the discussion of the current article is non-price restrictions that are the ones that their effects and subject are irrelevant to price but their main effect is on the other aspects of the market positively or negatively. The most important non-price restrictions are grant-back clause, tying arrangements, sale restrictions, output restriction, field of use restriction and non-compete clause. In fact, we regard these restrictions from competition law point of view and the main question here is whether the competition law looks at all non-price restrictions in licensing agreements in the same way and recognizes them as a distortion of competition or does not consider some of them anti-competitive due to their pro-competitive effects. Moreover, for comprehensive study of all of these restrictions it is important to verify whether the distortion of competition - regardless of its legal aspects- depends on various economic elements such as the market share of parties, kind of relevant technology market, dominant position or not and if the answer is positive what is the scope of such dependency and whether there is a specified standard or not. To answer these questions, three legal systems of Iran, the U. S. and the E. U. have been examined comparatively in the article. The current research is a fundamental study and exploits the analytical-descriptive method and uses the library method and digital or classic note taking for data collection. Of course, various legal systems take different solutions in meeting challenges due to their different frameworks. But, the comparative study of developed systems can open new horizons for some countries like Iran which has less than a decade experience in competition law legislation. The study shows that the Iranian legislation in this regard requires some amendments so that it can establish a more suitable equilibrium between competition regulations and technology transfer law. For instance, although E.U. regulations have provided some exemptions from competition law prohibitions for licensing agreements, Iranian statutes have not enacted any exemption in this regard and it will result in an illogical contrast between competition law in intellectual property law. Also, the mentioned subject may endanger the incentive for innovations and inventions. Due to the aforesaid concerns, the enactment of some exact and standard exemptions for licensing agreements by Iranian legislature is recommended in the current article. Also, the E.U. regulations have provided more clarity about the prohibition possibility of licensing agreements for activists in the intellectual property field because an exact market share has been mentioned as the prohibition border and thereby the duties of the license holders have been clarified. However, Iranian statutes have not provided any clear and specified border for economic dominant position or market share and therefore, it is not clear exactly that how much market share can put the licensor in a dominant position. So, it has been advised in the article that the Iranian Legislature enact the exact threshold of market share for dominance standard separately for vertical and horizontal licensing contracts. Unlike the U.S. and E.U. statutes that have provided some special competition rules for licensing agreements, Iranian legal system does not have any particular competition rules for such agreements and general competition standards apply in the field. Therefore, it has been suggested that Iranian legislature by tapping the experiences of two mentioned legal systems provide some special provisions in the field so it can result in more efficiency.

In this paper, the role and impact of the interest groups particularly protective internal one upon public policy making for business environment is studied through analytical comparative method. Firstly, definition and different types of the interest groups are introduced in brief. Interest groups in this articles refer to those kinds of groups which try to influence upon public resources allocations without taking political power directly. Also, it was mentioned that in general, there are two major types of interest groups: internal interest groups and external one. First types of interest groups have close relationships with government and they are recognized by that. The second one does not have direct connections with government and government has no tendency to recognize them. Then, the mechanism of protective interest groups influence upon public policies in different organs of government also is mentioned by using descriptive and comparative methods. Interest groups’ role and impact upon three branches of government during the formulating, assessment and implementation of public policies is reviewed. It was mentioned that in recent centuries’ governments have taken very major responsibilities in substantial public policy areas such as providing health services, educations, welfare of individual citizens, controlling and regulation of money, business and economy and so on. Because of that governments have become more powerful than before. At the same time, democratic sentiments were risen and ideal of bottom-up approach to governance encouraged political parties and interest groups to participate in governance. Nowadays, governments are not the only policy makers and political parties along with different types of interest groups that take part. In this paper, public policy making cycle is divided to five stages. First, formation of policies or legislative proposals. Second, formulation of policies or legislative proposal in the form of bill or representative proposal. Third, deliberation and enactment of public policies. Fourth, implementation stage, and the last one is called impact assessment stage. It is emphasized on the advantages of interest groups participation in all stages of public policy making and stressed that government and interest groups interactions in the course of policy making process is essential. Interest groups attempt to influence public policies through lobbying political official in executive power or parliamentarians during the deliberation and enactment process in parliament, respectively. If they failed to achieve their wishes through aforementioned stages, i.e., formation, formulation, deliberation and enactment stages in executive power and parliament, they try to do so by influencing courts. However, impact upon policies in courts are expensive and difficult and it depends on the extent of judiciary independence in a given country. Despite many advantages of interest groups’ participation in public policy making, there are some cautions here; hyper active interest groups which have better access to policy makers in different branches of government may produce inequality amongst citizens. Apart from that, interest groups may mislead public policy makers through providing incorrect information or false data. They may do it in favor of themselves against public interest. The most dangerous of all, if powerful interest groups dominate main public policy maker institutions, particularly parliament, they may disappoint citizens and eventually undermine legitimacy of political system as a whole. This paper shows that if some requirements and standards be satisfied, participation of interest groups could enrich the content of public policies and prevent the hasty decision making and therefore, avoid harmful policy decisions. Interest groups participation is desirable in cost and benefit analysis. They are very rich sources of information and data. Usually they seek to provide the required data and information during policy making process free of charge. They also have many experts which can help policy maker to assess the impact of decisions and policy before and after implementation of them. It is claimed that in this circumstances the transaction cost would in part be diminished. Lastly, the necessity of interest groups participation in policy making process in Iran is studied and some recommendations are provided on the basis of the foreign countries experiences. Unfortunately, due to weak participation of different entities such as political parties and interest groups, public policies’ quality, especially in business environment area in Iran, are not high enough. Encouraging citizens to engage in public policy making process in different phases of policy making process may stop this trend and help policy makers to make better decision. Participation of interest groups not only can promote government’s policy making functions, but also, can improve legitimacy of political system which has damaged recently because of economic crisis which has deep root in weak policy making in business environment in last decades. This paper takes preliminary steps toward better policy making through encouraging participation of interest groups as one of main actors in public policy making process.

Nowadays, advertising companies and firms try to establish a trade name which is superior to similar ones. In order to overcome their competitors in advertising campaigns, the firms have adopted new approaches. They use the best and newest marketing and commercial advertising methods to attract potential customers and consumers. Some advertisers use their competitor's trademarks, trade name, etc. to advertise their goods and services. This kind of advertisements which has increased considerably, is known as comparative advertising and makes it possible for consumers to compare the characteristics of different brands including the quality and price of goods and services and at the same time, in some cases may mislead consumers as to the source of goods and services and lead to unfair competition.
When companies initiate advertising, comparative advertising challenges including those related to intellectual property arise; therefore, the courts are faced with many questions: does using a competitor’s brand or trademark in comparative advertising an infringement of its trademark rights? Is it possible to raise fair use defense against the trademark infringement claim? What rules govern comparative advertising in online environment? In the Unites States, comparative advertisement is used frequently. There are a plenty of legal and economical literature in this regard and a set of specific rules deal with this issue. For example, the Federal Trade Commission, in the 1979 declaration, defined comparative advertising and declared the conditions of its prohibition. In fact, until 1970 comparative advertising had not been dealt with considerably. But since then, the attitudes towards its legality changed and it was welcomed and used frequently. Bixby and Lincoln defined and explained comparative advertising in 1989 (Bixby & Lincoln, 1989). There are other literature in 1993 and 1998 reviewed in this paper (Barry, 1998). In the 20th century, more works were prepared in the United States. For instance, in 2000, Posner discussed comparative advertising and its relation to consumer's confusion (Posner, 2000). In recent years, the relation between comparative advertising and intellectual property has been raised.
In this paper, first are studied the concept and types of comparative advertising, then the rules applicable to such advertisements and finally, the relation between comparative advertising and intellectual property and its main example in this regard, i.e., trademark. The authors have tried to answer the above said questions under the legal systems of the United States, the European Union, India (as a developing country) and Iran.
Theoretical frame work: The Federal Trade Commission has defined comparative advertising as advertisement which, neutrally, compares commercial brands from the viewpoint of quantity, price, introducing by name, image or other distinct information. In simple terms, comparative advertising is a form of commercial advertising in which two or more brands of similar products of the same kind are compared from one or more characteristics of the product. Comparative advertisements compare the goods or services of a company to those of its competitors. This kind of advertising has been designed to highlight the advantages of goods and services offered by advertiser in comparison to those of a competitor.
Comparative advertising may take two forms: direct comparative advertising and indirect comparative advertising. Direct comparative advertising is where the messages encouraging the sale, illustrate the merit of advertisers products in comparison to specific products offered by the competitor recognized by a special name or trademark. In indirect comparative advertising, the relation between compared products is implicitly mentioned but it is not expressly declared that the brand used is compared.
This paper, through a descriptive-analytic method, introduces comparative advertising from the perspective of a number of legal systems, namely: the United States as a pioneer in regulating comparative advertising, the European Union which has enacted a directive in this regard, India as a developing country whose experience can help with regulating such kind of advertisement in Iran.
In the European Union, directive 2006/114/EC on misleading and comparative advertising has, in certain circumstances, authorized comparative advertising. In India, comparative advertising has not been defined, but according to article 29 of Trade Marks Act 1999, commercial advertising must not contain unfair practices; therefore, comparative advertising may, in some way, be covered by the term unfair practices. In Iranian law, only in some scattered laws and regulations, comparative advertising has been referred to, which do not seem to be sufficient to meet the intellectual property rights holder's interests especially those of trademark holders, given the large volume of commercial advertising.
Conclusions & Suggestions: Some countries such as the United States have a strong set of rules applicable to comparative advertising both in traditional and online environments. In such systems, comparative advertising is allowed under certain circumstances. In Iran, despite scattered laws and regulations which have a limited scope or are restricted to contractual relations, there are no specific provisions dealing with comparative advertising or the possibility of infringing another's trademark in detail. Therefore, given the advantages of comparative advertising and at the same time, in order to prevent possible trademark infringement, it is necessary for the Iranian legislator to pay attention to this kind of advertising and enact new and specific rules regarding this issue and regulate comparative advertising by conditioning it to certain conditions.

International trade relations in the contemporary international environment is essential. Security and speed in the trade relations plays an important role in its success. International trade legal system is a special place to regulate transboundary relations between international traders. This legal regime must respond to emerging issues in international trade relations. Payments is one of the most important issues in international trades which should be regulated by the legal regime. One of the common and regular methods in international payments is opening of letters of credit which are done by banks of origin state and destination state. The documentary credit is the most common payment method in international agreements. This method of payment makes payments secure through financial guarantee of contracts by a third party. However, the principle of irrevocability in the letter of credit largely assures payments, but some events could impair the function of the bank. Among them, force majeure is a usual and possible execution which can make issuing banks unable to do their function well. This execution is referred to as Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credit (UCP 600) which has been approved by the International Chamber of Commerce. Force majeure in brief can be defined as unpredictable and uncontrollable and out of intention of the adducer. Force majeure makes execution of the contract impossible and may cause suspension or termination of the transaction.
In recent years, among the cases of force majeure, economic sanctions and specifically banking sanctions have been applied against some countries including Islamic Republic of Iran that have prevented from flow of international financial trade as fast and secure. Although article 36 UCP 600, which include instances of force majeure, hasnt mentioned to economic sanctions, these instances are not limited, because it noted to "or for any other reason" as one of instances of force majeure. Banking sanction as a unpredictable, inevitable and out of intention event, which can be introduced as a force majeure, causes to preclude responsibility of the banks and corporations which their state are under sanction. However, it is necessary to distinguish between the types of sanctions: mandatory sanctions and voluntary sanctions. While the banking sanctions by the Security Council of UN may suspend implementation of the grant of credit by banks, voluntary sanctions, such as secondary sanctions by the United States of America against Iran and Cuba, cannot be invoked as a force majeure. As well, sanctions that are applied by the bank itself are not an instance of force majeure, unless a pre-condition has been stipulated for sanctions in the contract for issuing of letters of credit.
This study attempted to examine the relationship between banking sanctions and force majeure and to evaluate effect of bank sanctions on the obligations arising from the issuing of letters of credit. By examining this issue, we can present solutions for facilitating the international trade, particularly transactions within the scope of the Islamic Republic of Iran as one of the countries that is subject to international sanctions. For this purpose, in this study, library study has been used to collect data and Descriptive- Analytical method has been adopted to provide appropriate solutions. Suggestions in this regard are as follows:A) The beneficiaries request from other party to guarantee the credit. Confirmation is used in the event that, for any reason, vendors believe that the bank’s commitments are not enough for issuing letter of credits and so demands other party to attach its bank credit to another bank approval -preferably from another country. In this way, beneficiaries would be sure before shipping goods on the board. In such cases, the confirming bank with approving the credit, has an independent obligation to the issuing bank in favor of the beneficiary. In other words, an independent contract between the confirming bank and the beneficiary would exist. B) In contract, parties predict the possibility of transforming the obligation of the issuing bank of letter of credit to a third party. This means that at the request of the beneficiary, the commitment of the bank should be exercised in favor of someone else. Whereas sanctions are primarily against a state and its citizens, commitments could be done in favor of other banks or companies. In other words, if issuing bank of letters of credit in relation to trade with the bank A from country A has applied bank sanctions against that bank, issuing bank can exercise its commitment in favor of Bank B from country B. C) This clause inserted in the contract for opening letters of credit that committed even in case of force majeure will be responsible or in cases of hardship parties are required to solve their dispute through the payment of adequate compensation. D) If the possibility of imposing binding economic sanctions on issuing banks is weak, the applicant and the beneficiary and issuing bank ought to avoid from acceptance of the voluntary sanctions clause. E) The applicant and the beneficiary of credit should refrain from the opening of letters of credit in the bank which are likely to be sanctioned in the future.