Announcement: 4th Indian Vis Pre-moot

The National Law University, Delhi is happy to announce that the 4th Indian Pre-moot for the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot will be conducted at NLU, Delhi from 7th to 9th March 2014. The Indian Vis Pre-moot has been successfully organized for the past three years by National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. This year, NLU, Delhi is co-organizing the Pre-moot in collaboration with NALSAR and NUJS.

The Pre-moot will be held at NLU, Delhi from 7th to 9th March, 2014, with the rounds taking place on the 8th and 9th. Participation in the pre-moot is open to all teams representing their respective Universities at the Willem C. Vis Moot Court Competition, Vienna, 2014 and also the Willem C. Vis (East) Moot Court Competition, Hong Kong, 2014. The Pre-Moot will have a competitive format, with separate preliminary and knock-out rounds. The oral rounds of the competition will be judged by professional arbitrators, experts in the field of arbitration and international commercial law, and Vis alumni who have performed exceedingly well at previous editions of the moot.

NLU Delhi is charging a nominal registration fee of Rs. 1500 per team (for teams exceeding three members, an additional fee of Rs 500 shall be charged per person) to cover organisational costs. Food and accommodation for all teams is included within the registration fee and shall be provided within the campus premises.

Teams may register by filling up the Registration Form available at the following link - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1RVFPajJ0veBrh14kuNAdhkvEaDMtk3U8JQY9R9DUMjs/viewform. The deadline for registration is 24 February, 2014. Each institution must register only once. If there are two separate teams participating in the Vienna and Hong Kong rounds and both teams are interested in participating in the pre-moot, both teams should register together within the same form. 

The aim of the Pre-moot is to provide teams with valuable practice and experience to ensure that Indian teams can improve their performance as the Vis, especially considering our stellar performances at the Moot in the last few years. So, please take advantage of this opportunity, and feel free to contact the organizers at indianpremoot@gmail.com in case of further clarifications and queries.

Punya Varma ( +919910457914)

Mini Saxena ( +919818037230) 

Divya Srinivasan (+918527389970)

National Law University Delhi

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vispremoot2014

[This is probably short notice to book tickets to Delhi, but Lexarbitri strongly suggests that every Indian Vis team make an attempt to participate in the Pre-moot -- it really helps in preparing for the real thing!]

Some events of interest

I wish to highlight two events organised by the International Chamber of Commerce which may be of interest to the readers.


1. Webinar on Revision of ICC Arbitration Rules.

The details of this event have been posted on the Indian Corporate Law Blog. The interactive webinar will be held on June 23, 2010 at 4:00pm (GMT+2). The speakers will include  Mr. Jason Fry, the Secretary General of ICC and Ms. Francesca Mazza, Counsel and Secretary to the ICC Commission on Arbitration. For registration and further details please visit the official site of the event.

NLS arbitration moot : results

As we have been refraining from putting up detailed posts on account of being busy with the NLS arbitration moot, I thought I would post the results of what is arguably the most reputes arbitration moot in the country. NUJS won the moot for the third consecutive time in a row. In addition, we won the best memorial award and the second best speaker award. The best speaker award was won by Shruti Chandrashekharan from NALSAR. NALSAR also bagged the second best memo and second best team awards. The NUJS team consisted of, in addition to the two contributors of this blog, Mr. Sankarshana Meeyala and Ms. Pankhuri Agarwal. We congratulate the NALSAR team for the fight they put up in the finals and NLS for the wonderful event, especially in terms of the well drafted problem and the commendable judging standards.

Our performance was great news to us especially because of the circumstances that prevailed. To begin with, this was Rukmini's first moot as a speaker though she has done several before as a researcher. It was the first ever moot for Sankarshana and Pankhuri. Also, the moot problem released when our exam schedule had already been out and we were in the middle of our preparations. The exams got over on the 13th of May and the memorial submission (after an extension) was on the 18th. I was scheduled to start interning with a reputed law firm in Mumbai on the 17th. So, I left Kolkata (and my team) on the 14th and wrote most of my part of the memorial in my train to Mumbai based mostly on whatever I could recall of sale of goods and arbitration from earlier moots and classes rather than the luxury of fresh research. Rukmini had a tough time collating the drafts of the memorial all alone and barely managing to complete the submission on time. To add to all this, I went to office on Friday till lunch break (on account of my own being a bit crazy; the firm did not want me to), took the night flight to Bangalore, read the completed memorial and the ancillary documents for the first time in the plane and started speaking on Saturday. Considering all these factors, I am really excited about our performance. However, we did not get much opportunity to express the excitement, given that the results were announced at 5:30 and I had to leave for the airport at 6:00.

[In the course of a session]

There was one argument in this moot I really cherish. This idea hit me while packing our bags for the semi final round against GNLU. The other side was required to argue that the transaction in question was licensing of software and not sale and hence Sections 15 and 16 of the Sale of Goods Act does not apply. This argument was based on the premise that for a sale, title in the good must have passed and in this case there was no passing of title given the extensive restrictions and limitations placed on the use of the software by the alleged buyer under the contract. I picked up our copy of Mulla on Sale of Goods opened to the front cover and read out the copy right warning. I asked, "if the title in this copy of this book passed to me for consideration despite the restrictions and limitations imposed by the copyright warning, what is your basis to say that the title in the software did not pass to the claimant due to the restrictions and limitations imposed by the contract?" This seemed to work fine and I repeated it with success in the finals as well. I think the best part about this line of argument was that it appealed to common sense rather than to the technicalities of law.

[With the NALSAR team]

We thank all those who helped out in the process - George Varghese, Iram Huq and Vivek Menon for helping Rukmini pick up the basics of public speaking; Amrita Biswas for helping with the memorial; some associates of the firm I am interning with for being extremely supportive, Indian Railways for the place where the memo was written, publishers of Mulla on Sale of Goods for the stringent copyright warning, etc.

We will resume regular posts soon. Now that the technical issues with Blogspot have been resolved, Lex Arbitri will soon bring you fresh updates on arbitration in India and abroad.