The Battle of David and Goliath

Antigua has won the right to waive all intellectual property copyrights in such areas as music and movies. This is worth a potential 21 million dollars a year to the tiny Islands who argued that Washington had wrongly blocked gambling companies from operating in America.

Originally Antigua and Barbuda had claimed damages worth 3.44 billion dollars, while Washington claimed the damages should be worth $500 000 to the small Caribbean islands.

The Geneva based watchdog has in the past given trade based compensation but has never violated copyright laws as part of any decision. For Antigua this means that they can distribute American DVDs, CDs and software as they wish.

Antiguas lawyer, Mark Mendel said; That has only been done once before and is, I believe, a very potent weapon,. I hope that the United States government will now see the wisdom in reaching some accommodation with Antigua over this dispute.

This landmark ruling could mean that the fun is not yet over for America, as other WTO member states may file their own claims against US as they suffer from the online gambling ban.