Techdirt: WTO Gives Antigua Only $21 Million In Sanctions; US Says ‘Not So Fast…’

The battle between the US and Antigua over online gambling is rather long. You can go back here to read a summary of the back and forth — but the quick version is that the US violated its own free trade agreements by banning some forms of online gambling (while allowing others). Antigua, home to many online gambling firms, filed a complaint with the WTO. The WTO repeatedly sided with Antigua, and the US repeatedly ignored those rulings, before the US eventually unilaterally claimed that it had changed its trade agreement so that online gambling wasn’t covered. In response, Antigua (with very little power) started pushing for a different kind of sanction against the US: it asked to be allowed to violate intellectual property of US firms, including copyrights, patents and trademarks. Antigua didn’t really want that to happen — it wanted to use that to put pressure on the US to back down and allow online gambling. A bunch of other countries started siding with Antigua until the US bought them off, leaving Antigua and a few other small countries fighting the US at the WTO.

Techdirt: WTO Gives Antigua Only $21 Million In Sanctions; US Says ‘Not So Fast…’

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