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  • Commercial Law
09 Jul 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: What is a Smart Contract?

Philipp Paech

The term ‘smart contract’ refers to computer code that is designed automatically to execute contractual duties upon the occurrence of a trigger event. Referring to a 1997 paper by Szabo, the simple...
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OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Financial Regulation
11 Jun 2018

ICYMI - ‘New Frontiers: Technology, Finance and Regulation’ (5th Annual Conference of the Journal of Financial Regulation, 29 June 2018)

OBLB Editors

From distributed ledgers and smart contracts, to data mining, algorithmic trading, and robo-advisors - new technologies are rapidly changing the face of the financial services industry. These...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
01 Jun 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: How to Resolve Smart Contract Disputes - Smart Arbitration as a Solution

Mateja Durovic

Recent developments in 'smart' digital technologies, in particular blockchain technology, are changing and challenging the framework in which business is conducted. A prominent feature of the...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
25 May 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Defining Smart Contracts - The Search for Workable Legal Categories

Riccardo de Caria

This blog post tackles the problem of defining smart contracts. In particular, it reviews the existing definitions of smart contracts in some of the main laws enacted and scholarly articles published...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
18 Apr 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Biometric data-matching risks and the rise of self-sovereign identity

Alan Morrison

Reporters are in the habit of looking at emerging technologies in isolation when describing their benefits, and that’s certainly the case with biometrics, blockchains, smart contracts, artificial...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
17 Apr 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Toward a Consumer Contract Law for an Algorithmic Age

Lauren Scholz

Proprietary, sophisticated computer algorithms are a hidden yet central element of how we work and play today. Businesses use algorithms internally to make decisions and improve their service...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
05 Apr 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Smart Contracting Can Reduce Legal and Operating Costs

Kai Jacob

Like with any new and hyped topic, the current discussion on smart contracts is rather complex and confusing. I believe that asking What, Who and Why can help to structure the debate and shed some...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
29 Mar 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Micro-Justice and New Law? “Swarm Arbitration” as a Means of Dispute Resolution in Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts

Andreas Hacke, Faculty of Law

If Alice wishes to buy real estate from Bert free of defects, she will – under the old law – enter into a contract with Bert contemplating their transaction. Their contract will be governed by the...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
29 Mar 2018

Law and Autonomous Systems Series: Smart consumer contracts - The end of civil procedure?

Martin Fries

Today, consumers are provided with a vast array of mandatory consumer rights, ranging from statutory warranty and cancellation rights to claims for compensation in cases of impaired performance...
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OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
  • Financial Regulation
29 Mar 2018

Introducing a Special Series on Law and Autonomous Systems

Horst Eidenmüller, St Hugh's College | Nikita Aggarwal, Brasenose College

This post introduces the ‘Law and Autonomous Systems' Series, a special series of posts based on contributions to the ‘Law of Autonomous Systems and the Automation of Law’ conference that took place...
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OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
  • Financial Regulation
05 Mar 2018

ICYMI – 2nd Annual OBLB Conference on ‘The Law of Autonomous Systems and the Automation of Law’

OBLB Editors

The 2nd Annual Conference of the Oxford Business Law Blog will bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss emerging issues in the field of law and artificial intelligence. The conference...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Financial Regulation
13 Feb 2018

Blockchains and the GDPR

Michèle Finck

Blockchains and the GDPR The imminent entry into force of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coincides with pronounced hype surrounding blockchains as a new method of data storage and...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Finance
  • Financial Regulation
03 Jan 2018

Crypto-Securities Regulation: ICOs, Token Sales and Cryptocurrencies under EU Financial Law

Philipp Hacker | Chris Thomale

Cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and ethereum, have not only risen to public attention as novel means of payments. Rather, as we explain in a recent article, the current hype is fueled by financial...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
19 Dec 2017

Legal Tech: The Era of Bad Ideas

Zachary Korman

Legal technology is starting to attract serious attention. Just a few years ago, when I was still in law school, talking to a lawyer or professor about legal tech was like pulling teeth. Maybe it was...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Governance
22 Aug 2017

Blockchain and Smart Contracting Tech for Modern Shareholder Involvement

Christoph Van der Elst | Anne Lafarre

Annual General Meetings (AGMs) are considered dull mandatory yearly rituals that provide entertainment to some small shareholders, but, above all, cause many business lawyers and executive officers a...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
18 Aug 2017

Corporate Governance for Complex Cryptocurrencies

Philipp Hacker

The Bitcoin blockchain has just forked into two rivaling chains; the same split happened to the Ethereum blockchain after its hard fork of July 2016. The development of these, and other,...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
14 Jul 2017

Self-Driving Contracts

Anthony Niblett | Anthony Casey

Predictive capabilities created by big data and artificial intelligence increasingly allow parties to draft contracts that fill their own gaps and interpret their own standards without adjudication...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
13 Jul 2017

Cryptotransaction Dispute Resolution

Wulf Kaal | Craig Calcaterra

The increasing separation of physical and virtual identities driven by anonymity in the crypto-economy challenges the existing jurisdictional means over virtual transactions involving blockchain...
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OBLB categories

  • Brexit
  • Commercial Law
  • Competition/ Antitrust
  • Corporate Finance
  • Corporate Governance
  • Financial Regulation
05 May 2017

2016-2017 Oxford Business Law Blog Round-Up: Most Read Opinion Pieces

John Armour, Faculty of Law | Horst Eidenmüller, St Hugh's College | Pavlos Eleftheriadis, Mansfield College | Luca Enriques, Faculty of Law | Ariel Ezrachi, Pembroke College | Cheng Lim | Bruno Meyerhof Salama | Calum Sargeant | TJ Saw | Maurice Stucke, Institute of European and Comparative Law

On 14 March 2017, the Oxford Business Law Blog ('OBLB') marked its first anniversary. One year ago, we set out to create a leading and truly international forum for the exchange of ideas and...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Financial Regulation
24 Apr 2017

How Blockchain Technology Will Impact the Digital Economy

Christian Catalini

The Platform of the Future? The survival of any organization depends on its ability to outperform competitors and marketplaces in attracting and rewarding talent, ideas and capital. As communication...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
07 Mar 2017

Smart Contracts

Interest in ‘smart contracts’ has exploded in the past few months. These are agreements written using computer code which self-execute in ‘distributed ledger’ networks. A distributed ledger, or ‘...

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