The Law Commission has launched a call for evidence on jurisdiction issues in relation to electronic trade documents and digital assets such as crypto-tokens
It simultaneously published a four-week consultation on draft legislation as recommended in its report last June, ‘Digital assets’.
Its call for evidence seeks to explore which country’s law and which court applies where cross-border disputes arise over digital assets and e-trade documents, as well as how judgments can be recognised and enforced.
Bitcoin and other distributed ledger technologies pose particular legal problems, as the call for evidence explains.
Private international law has techniques for identifying the location of digital files or transactions as these are stored offline on a hard-drive or in several computers or online in the cloud, where there is a data storage provider. Distributed ledger technologies, however, have been designed to avoid the idea of a central authority. They are decentralised technologies which have simultaneous and equally valid connections to jurisdictions across the world.
Professor Sarah Green, commercial and common law commissioner, said: ‘Digitisation and decentralisation pose significant challenges to the traditional methods by which private international law resolves conflicts of jurisdiction and conflicts of laws.
‘We are seeking views from those with specialist knowledge and experience.’
Find out more here and respond by 16 May.
Its consultation ‘Digital assets and personal property’, also just launched, concerns a short Bill confirming that crypto-tokens, non-fungible tokens and other assets, such as voluntary carbon credits, are capable of being recognised as property. The Bill confirms such digital assets attract personal property rights and can be treated as property in the event of insolvency or theft or where they are interfered with without the consent of the owner.
Digital assets do not fit within traditional categories of personal property, and the courts have moved towards the recognition of a ‘third category’ of personal property, the Commission explained in its consultation. The Commission therefore recommended legislation to remove any uncertainty.
Respond to the consultation here by 22 March.
