The starting point for an ALAI audience is easily the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which owes its origin to the efforts of Victor Hugo and other members of the association. Article 33(1) of the Berne Convention, which was first introduced as Article 27bis at the Brussels Revision Conference in 1948, provides signatories with options to settle disputes through the International Court of Justice.

Although this optional dispute settlement mechanism has existed for more than seven decades, no signatory to the Berne Convention has ever used it to resolve an international copyright dispute. Instead, multinational copyright industries and their supportive governments have turned to two alternative mechanisms: (1) state-to-state dispute settlement (SSDS), such as the WTO dispute settlement process; and (2) investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).

Commissioned for the ALAI Congress 2018 in Montreal, Canada, this chapter reviews the strengths and limitations of both SSDS and ISDS. The chapter focuses on multinational copyright dispute settlement.