Hello, there is a grey area that may have cost me the last game of TI3 and i'd like your opinion on this.

The 'Technology Buy-Back' Law allows a player to discard a tech to receive 6 trade goods during the Status Phase. The Scuttle units rule has a similar wording, allowing a player to scuttle units at any point in the Status Phase. The errata state that a player cannot scuttle units before the Objectives Step, only after the 1st Step is completed. It follows from this that the Law cannot be enacted by a player before the Objective Step is completed as well. I believe that nothing should be allowed to take place before the Objective Step as a rule.

Is there a ruling on this? What's your opinion?

There's no official ruling on this, but I'd be inclined to follow precedent and say you can't use the ability before the 'Claim Objectives' step.

I'm inclined to agree. I"m assuming the reason this may have cost you the game is because they used those 6 trade goods to fulfill one of the "I now spend X resources" objectives? In this case, if they're not ready to claim the objective when the step rolls around, they can't "oh just one moment let me trade this", they have to be ready to claim it as the phase begins.

Things like this are why my group both loves and hates the game at the same time. Its complexity makes it great, but it's that same complexity that tends to screw things around to the point where even with 100 games played you can't really test every combination of actions/laws/etc. I agree that objectives must always come first, you're either ready to claim the point or you're not. My full opinion is that there should (at least in a faq) have an order of operations during each phase. They faq'd the order of pre-combat steps somewhere in the faq, so why not everything else? Things like creating a specific time when we can play action cards during the strategy or status phase or do any other things that laws or other effects would allow during these phases.