On 17-18 September 2020, UNIDROIT hosted a hybrid exploratory workshop on Digital Assets and Private Law at its seat in Rome and via Zoom.
The two-day event was attended by over 75 participants and featured opening remarks by the Secretary-General of UNIDROIT, Professor Ignacio Tirado, followed by four sessions exploring different issues of private law within the digital assets sphere.
Session 1 focused on ‘Digital Assets: A Legal Taxonomy and Challenges to Private Law’. This session considered some of the more fundamental challenges regarding the application of private law concepts to digital assets, including the application of property law concepts to digital assets, the difficulties in developing a legal taxonomy of digital assets and the challenges in mapping private law concepts onto assets based on a new, and ever-developing, technology. The session was chaired by Professor Louise Gullifer (University of Cambridge) and featured presentations by Jason Grant Allen (Humboldt University), Tetsuo Morishita (Sophia University), and David Fox (University of Edinburgh).
Session 2 considered ‘Legal Issues in the Use of Digital Assets as Collateral: Existing and Emerging International Standards’. This session discussed various legal issues surrounding the use of digital assets as collateral for loans. It provided illustrations of the typical transactions and then examined how the existing and emerging international standards, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions and the ALI-ELI Principles for a Data Economy, addressed legal issues that arise in secured transactions. The session also identified the aspects of secured transactions that the current UNIDROIT project on digital assets would explore in coordination with these standards. This session was chaired by Dr. Marek Dubovec (Kozolchyk National Law Center) and featured presentations by Andrew Hinkes (Carlton Fields), Steve Weise (Proskauer Rose LLP), and Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).
On day 2. Session 3 examined ‘Digital Assets Linked to Real-World Assets (Digital Twins): Civil Law and Private International Law Implications’. This session focused on exploring the issues of digital twins which represented a real-world asset and typically faced problems of how to prevent the digital twin from separating from the real-world asset which it represented. The speakers explained how their respective jurisdictions dealt with these issues. Additionally, all speakers also shared their practical experiences with the multi-jurisdiction issues faced by many, if not all, digital asset projects, realising that in most cases more than one jurisdiction was claiming to be applicable to their digital asset. This session was chaired by Dr. Nina-Luisa Siedler (DWF Germany) and featured presentations by Thomas Nägele (NÄGELE Attorneys), Joshua Klayman (Linklaters), and Urszula McCormack (King & Wood Mallesons).
Session 4 looked at ‘Intermediated Digital Assets: Custody Issues’. This session addressed the settings in which an acquirer of digital assets chooses to hold the assets through a custodian and compared “direct” holding with various structures for custodial holding. It explored the practical and legal aspects of custodial holding from the perspectives of an acquirer and a custodian, including issues of private law and insolvency law. This session was chaired by Professor Charles Mooney, Jr. (University of Pennsylvania) and featured presentations by Carla L. Reyes (Southern Methodist University), Matthias Haentjens (University of Leiden), and Stephen A. Keen, Esq. (Perkins Coie LLP).
A concluding session was also held which was chaired by Professor Hideki Kanda (Gakushuin University, UNIDROIT Governing Council Member) and featured summary reports of the discussions presented by the chairs of the previous sessions.
Professor Iacopo Donati is the UNIDROIT/Bank of Italy Chair Holder and is mainly responsible for assisting in the Bank Insolvency project. He is Professor of Corporate and Insolvency Law at the University of Siena, and coordinates the research project ‘Pro.Re.Ba.’ (Proportionating rules on bank crisis prevention and management to the case of retail banks), which has received funding from the Italian Ministry of University. He has previously taught corporate law at the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’, at the University of Florence and at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’.
rtered Institute of Arbitrators (London). He further holds a post-graduate diploma in law from the Kenya School of Law. Allan is also a scholar from the Hague Academy of International Law.
rofessor Ignacio Tirado was appointed Secretary-General by the Governing Council at its 97th session, and officially took office on 27 August 2018. A national of Spain, Professor Tirado (Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law, Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain) holds a PhD from the Universities of Bologna and Autónoma de Madrid and an LLM from the University of London. Professor Tirado has been a Senior Legal Consultant at the World Bank’s Legal Vice-Presidency and Financial Sector Practice for more than nine years, having also consulted for the IMF on insolvency related matters as well as for the Asian Development Bank on commercial legal reform.
A Swedish national, Ms Lena Peters grew up in Italy where she attended an English school. In 1978 she took her Juris Kandidatexamen at Stockholm University followed by a Master of Laws from King’s College, London (1979). Since 1985 she has been with UNIDROIT, first as Research Officer, lastly as Principal Legal Officer, her main duties being Secretary to the Working Group for the Preparation of Principles of International Commercial Contracts, Secretary to the Study Group on Franchising, Secretary to the Committee of Governmental Experts on Franchising.She also collaborated on the project for the preparation of the ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure. She is currently Managing Editor of the Uniform Law Review and responsible for publications at UNIDROIT.
Marina Schneider is Principal Legal Officer and Treaty Depositary at UNIDROIT. She studied law at the University of Strasbourg (France) and Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne. She joined the UNIDROIT in 1987 and was involved in the elaboration and French versions of most UNIDROIT instruments since. She is in charge of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects and of the UNESCO-UNIDROIT Model Provisions on State Ownership of Undiscovered Cultural Objects. She is the author of the Explanatory Report of the 1995 Convention and many articles on the Convention and other international instruments in the field. Ms Schneider is also responsible for the project on private collections and for the UNIDROIT Convention Academic Project (UCAP). She is member of the Board of the International Society for Research on Art and Cultural Heritage Law (ISCHAL).
Professor of Commercial Law, Carlos III University of Madrid. Currently, Sir Roy Goode Scholar at UNIDROIT, Rome, 2021-2022. Chair of Excellence 2017-2018 at University of Oxford (Uc3m- Santander Program), affiliated to Harris Manchester College. Previously Distinguished Visiting Professor and fellow of a number of Academic Institutions. Arbitrator of Madrid Court of Arbitration. Member of ELI (European Law Institute) Council and Executive Committee. Member of the Expert Group of the European Commission on Liability and New Technologies and member of the Expert Group of the European Observatory of Platform Economy; the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law; the expert group of the Inclusive Global Legal Innovation Platform for Online Dispute Resolution – UNCITRAL and Hong Kong Department of Justice. Expert of the UNIDROIT Study Group on the MAC Protocol of the Cape Town Convention on International Interests. Delegate of Spain to UNIDROIT for the adoption of the Protocol, delegate of Spain in Working Group VI of UNCITRAL on secured transactions and in Working Group IV on Electronic Commerce. Member of UNIDROIT Working Groups on Enforcement and Warehouse Receipts.
William Brydie-Watson is an Australian lawyer who specialises in secured transactions law and private international law. Before joining UNIDROIT, William was a government lawyer in the Private International Law and International Arbitration section of the Australian Attorney-General’s Department, where he worked primarily on treaty negotiation and the implementation of private international law treaties in Australia. At UNIDROIT, he is primarily responsible for the implementation of the Mining, Agriculture and Construction (MAC Protocol) to the 2001 Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the development of a Model Law on Factoring. William also serves as UNIDROIT’s liaison with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and as manager of the Institute’s Scholarship and Internship Programme. Admitted to practice in New South Wales and the High Court of Australia, he has a Bachelor of Arts (honours), a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws from the Australian National University. William also lectures on International Secured Transactions Law at the Eotvos Lorand Faculty of Law in Budapest.