ANNEX Q:

ACQUIRED RIGHTS

The term  acquired rights  refers to rights that a given company may have obtained over

time. These rights are typically unbound in trade agreements, and thus may be revoked by

governments. A central objective of trade negotiations, such as accession agreements, or

free trade agreements, is to secure these rights or at least not to impair them. In these

agreements, CSI seeks affirmative commitments to maintaining such rights, as in the

Oman accession agreement. In trade agreements based on the  negative list  approach,

such rights remain unimpaired unless specifically reserved. In such cases, however, we

seek an affirmative explanatory statement by negotiators assuring that such acquired

rights are intact and unimpaired.

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