National treatment is a legal concept requiring that foreign citizens be treated just as favorably by a country’s laws as the host country’s own citizens.
National treatment is frequently found in intellectual property law and forms the basis of many international copyright treaties. As a result, when copyright infringement suits are brought, the applicable law for the case will be the copyright law of the forum country, even if the copyrighted work was created in a different country. National treatment clauses are frequently found in bilateral investment treaties as well.
National treatment differs from conditional national treatment, in which a country provides national treatment to foreign citizens based upon the condition that foreign countries provide a similar treatment to its citizens.
[Last updated in July of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team]