Just three months. That’s how long it took for the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) to use new powers to publicly name and shame a virtual asset (VA) exchange. Known as “JPEX” , the unlicensed crypto exchange was warned about potential breaches of the...
Xiaoxia Zhang, an IP Partner in KWM’s Beijing office, explains the view of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China (SPC) on how an invention’s background technology and purpose can impact a claim for patent equivalent infringement. The doctrine of...
Suraj Sajnani and Jesse Tizard look at a recent Hong Kong court decision which determined that decisions regarding compliance with arbitration preconditions are a matter of admissibility. On 30 June 2023, the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) delivered its judgment in C v...
Suraj Sajnani, Sian Knight and Michelle Chen discuss the Hong Kong High Court's express confirmation, for the first time ever, that cryptocurrency is “property” and can form the subject matter of a trust. The Court’s decision in Re Gatecoin Ltd aligns Hong Kong’s...
Peter Bullock discusses the rise of crypto disputes and why they will continue to occur in 2023 and beyond Although it has been 14 years since the the presumed pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto defined the genesis block of bitcoin, the subject of cryptocurrencies, digital...
Jesse Tizard and Jenny Fok discuss a recent Hong Kong case in which it was determined that unless and until there is a crystallised “dispute”, there is nothing to refer to arbitration. While that may seem obvious, this is the key lesson from the recent (and somewhat...
A smart contract is self-executing code that follows pre-programmed rules, which are then verifiable on a blockchain. As such they are a misnomer. They are not smart, because they can only do what they are programmed to do. They are not so much a contract as a tool...
On 13 May 2022 the High Court did not monkey around when granting an urgent injunction against a legendary Bored Ape NFT. The High Court has now published its reasoning (Janesh s/o Rajkumar v Unknown Person (“CHEFPIERRE”) [2022] SGHC 264). In its ground breaking...
In a judgment delivered on 7 October 2022, the Singapore High Court has refused to enforce a Pennsylvania, USA seated ICDR emergency arbitration award. The Court’s basis for not enforcing the emergency arbitration award was that the Defendant was not given an...
Litigants at Hong Kong courts now can expect an earlier date to receive their judgments. To ensure that reserved judgments are handed down as expeditiously as is reasonably practicable, the judiciary issued a Practice Direction 36 on 20 May 2022 (“Practice...
“Whether procedural requirement[s]…ha[ve] been fulfilled is a question intrinsically suitable for determination by an arbitral tribunal, and is best decided by an arbitral tribunal in order to give effect to the parties’ presumed intention to achieve a quick,...
From 1 December 2021, a claimant can make an application for summary judgment in Hong Kong High Court and District Court cases, notwithstanding an allegation of fraud. What is summary judgment, and how summary is it anyway? In short, a summary judgment application...
C'est la guerre! Winter is coming and with it the narrow Channel or La Manche between England and France is looking chillier by the day – not least because of the fallout from Brexit and the ongoing debate over access by French fishing boats to UK fishing grounds. ...
Before we start the ‘inception’ style mental gymnastics, it may be best to take a deep breath. What are anti-suit injunctions? In most common law jurisdictions, anti-suit injunctions are a widely used tool to force a party to withdraw (or not commence) proceedings in...
There has been an increasing number of cases in which PRC courts recognize and enforce foreign arbitral awards in accordance with the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the “New York Convention”). We share our experience and...
Hong Kong’s position - representative proceedings as an alternative to class action On 28 May 2012, the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong published a Report on Class Actions (Report), introducing class action regime as one of the law reform initiatives in Hong Kong....
In 2020, the Hong Kong Judiciary took much awaited steps to harness modern technology into the resolution of cases it hears. Passing of Court Proceedings (Electronic Technology) Bill On 17 July 2020, the Court Proceedings (Electronic Technology) Bill (“Bill”) passed...
On 28 January 2021 (“yesterday” at the time of writing), the two of us (Paul and Suraj) delivered a webinar on execution of deeds and documents, together with our friends at Thomson Reuters. If you’ve found your way on to this page, you probably realise that both of...
Over the past two years, I’ve seen an alarmingly high number of clients come to us as victims of cyber-fraud. The modus operandi can vary greatly. Examples of Cyber Fraud Here are some examples we have seen: Example 1: Email instructions from a “senior executive” of...
From January 2021, the District Court of Hong Kong will introduce Case Settlement Conferences (CSC) to assist parties to settle their disputes at an early stage. The CSC is a meeting between the parties, overseen by a District Court Master. The aim of a CSC is to...