whizzer and ghors
The staff counsel has made his initial review and conducted his meeting with the parties. For whatever reason, he extended the time for briefing and set the case on the oral argument docket. It appears this one will be argued.
Nok is hanging on a string arguing that the ICC award failed to resolve the disputes of the parties. IMO, this is the reason for the stonewalling concerning sales reporting, audits and times and methods of payment. We are in the dark because we have not seen the final award or the dissent with respect to enforceability, but I doubt the court is going to be moved by the Nok attempt to force every sentence in the Master Agreement and PLA to arbitration cloaked by some off the wall dispute. Habit and custom in the industry dictates that if royalty obligations are established based on a rate, then the sales of the covered products must be reported and the royalty must be paid. This refusal to come to a conclusion during the dispute resolution process set forth in the written contracts regarding the sales reporting, audits and payment schedules is clearly a smoke and mirrors effort to argue that the Tribunal failed to resolve the differences and disputes of the parties in rendering its award. It is my opinion that Nok never raised these issues in the first arbitration intentionally and the lone dissenter took advantage of same with his argument that the award lacked enforceability. Using the Nok theory, no arbitration could ever resolve the disputes of the parties if one of the parties decides to dispute the contracts one section at a time. However, it appears that somehow Nok hopped over the first hurdle by convincing the staff counsel that it has some valid justiciable issues to brief and argue. I suspect that the caseload of the staff counsel was a significant factor. He recognized that settlement chances were slim and none and he moved on to the next file on the stack.
MO
loop
