
Simon Cohen gets to grips with digital assets and disputes, in this week’s NLJ. Cohen, partner at W Legal, highlights that the law of England and Wales is well-suited to this area of technology
He writes that digital assets ‘have no physical, real-world, presence or manifestation and can exist everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
‘That may be a Schrödinger-esque concept for philosophers. For lawyers, however, and in particular English judges, it poses no such difficulty.’
He covers the Law Commission’s extremely concise draft Property (Digital Assets) Bill, and reviews some critical questions for the courts to address, including jurisdiction.
Cohen concludes: ‘Jurists and lawyers from all over the globe should be left in no doubt that England and Wales is currently at the centre of the global Web 3.0, blockchain, digital asset industry’.