Kevin Nachtrab
Senior Patent Attorney, European Law Department, Johnson &Johnson, Brussels, Belgium

So you and your negotiating partners have agreed on the use of mediation/arbitration as the mechanism to resolve disputes that may arise under your IP agreement. That is all well and good but the hard part of the task is now at hand: properly formulating the actual wording of the mediation/ arbitration clauses. The goal being to insure that you get the procedure you want while avoiding pitfalls which can be result in unintended effects or, even, in the entire agreement to arbitrate/mediate to be ruled invalid and unenforceable.