Extraterritorial Business Regulation

This chapter deals with the problem of laws and regulations applying outside the territory of the legislating/regulating state, with a special focus on U.S. practice. It begins by summarizing the basic principles of prescriptive jurisdiction in the United States while acknowledging that the applicability of any given statute beyond U.S. borders is determined based on the individual statute in question. It then discusses the jurisdictional reach of specific forms of business regulation, viz., U.S. antidiscrimination in employment law, antitrust (competition) law, intellectual property law, and securities regulation. In some cases, the statutory language addresses the extraterritorial effect of the law explicitly; in others, courts have based their holdings on general principles or an interpretation of the statutory language and legislative history. In the course of this discussion, overlapping and conflicting principles are analyzed, and foreign practices compared to U.S. practice. It concludes with practice essays and multiple choice questions.