avg 
(2) The power of the Authority to veto claims and to fix their size and 
duration. In order to avoid the abuses which can arise from monopoly 
power, the rights of claimants in all essential respects should be established 
in the treaty creating the regime. 
(3) The denial of any re-registration preference to a state which had 
developed the area concerned. Such a policy could seriously impair incentive 
to exploit. 
(4) The provisions that claims must be registered by a state or states. This 
presents problems in situations where private enterprise has invested in 
preliminary exploration and seeks to perfect its rights in an area before 
claim-jumpers can take advantage of its work. It should be made certain 
that the principle of first-come, first-registered” would apply as of the date 
the applicant gave proper notice to the Authority that it had filed with a 
member state an application that it register on the applicant’s behalf. 
(5) The standard of an adequate return. This is a difficult and unrealistic 
concept to apply to the extractive industries, where risks are high and many 
unsuccessful attempts have to be paid for out of the small percentage of 
successful ventures. 
(6) Scientific research. Care must be exercised to prevent the registration 
system from being used to impede genuine scientific research. 
(7) The concept of ‘paper claims,’ ie., speculative registrations. A specu- 
lative race to the registry office, a ‘race to grab,’ is inevitable if the reward 
for being first in line, without any prior exploratory effort, is to receive 
a power to exclude all others from a large area for a period of several years. 
Experience with mineral laws on land has proven this. 
‘Under the 1968 Resolution of the House of Delegates, the American Bar Asso- 
ciation is committed to support the development as soon as practicable of inter- 
national arrangements to govern the exploitation of deep-sea resources beyond the 
limits of national jurisdiction. Such arrangements, the Resolution affirms, must 
assure, inter alia, “. . . freedom of exploration by all nations on a nondiscrimina- 
tory basis, security of tenure to those engaged in producing the resources in com- 
pliance with such rules, encouragement to discover and develop these resources, 
and optimum use to the benefit of all peoples... .” 
\Except for the intermediate zone proposal, and subject to the various caveats 
expressed in the foregoing comments, we believe that the Commission’s recom- 
mendations for a deep-sea regime are broadly in harmony with the principles of 
the Resolution. 
We would reiterate our belief, however, that the details of the Commission’s 
proposed registry plan need careful attention before being submitted as a basis 
for international discussions. There are, in our opinion, too many loose ends and 
loopholes which might permit abuse in connection with the requirements for the 
registration, maintenance and vacating of claims. We are all against a race to 
grab. It is difficult at present for anyone to grab the deep seabed physically but 
the concept of registration of paper claims would for the first time create the 
mechanism to make such a grab possible. Obviously safeguards against such a 
possibility must be drawn with the utmost care, but the factual data necessary for 
meaningful draftmanship are not yet available. 
Many of our members strongly believe that the first step, in setting up a deep 
sea regime, should not be the establishment of a system which recognizes paper 
claims or purely speculative registrations, but should be, instead, agreement on 
norms of conduct to be observed by the nations capable of carrying out deep-sea 
mineral exploration. Such norms would be designed to minimize interference 
between expeditions or operators, and to preclude jumping of areas which are 
under actual exploration or development, plus reasonable protective margins. This, 
they believe, may well evolve into a more formal system of registry of claims. put 
only after enough information has been acquired to make possible an agreement on 
criteria with respect to areas, duration, diligence requirements, and other factors 
historically associated with mining rights. Such consensus on norms of conduct 
should be without prejudice to any agreement to dedicate some portion of the 
value of production from deep-sea- mineral resources to agreed international 
purposes. 
The Commission also proposes an “Intermediate Zone.” Our 1969 
report contains the following description and comment : 
1 This concept was referred to in our 1968 Joint Report. 
