September 2018 - international litigation blog
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September 2018

September 27, 2018 In Intra-EU BIT, Recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards By Quentin Decleve

English Court of Appeal Stays Miculas’ Enforcement Proceedings

On 27 July 2018 the English Court of Appeal (the Court of Appeal) confirmed the stay of UK enforcement proceedings of the 2013 arbitral award handed down in favour of the Micula brothers (the Miculas). Interestingly, the Court of Appeal’s ruling carefully navigates through the thorny interrelationship of the ICSID Convention and EU law.READ MORE

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September 18, 2018 In Arbitration agreement, Jurisdictional issues By Quentin Decleve

Brussels Court of Appeal Rules FIFA and UEFA Arbitration Clauses Inapplicable

On 29 August 2018, in a case involving FIFA (the International Football Association) and UEFA (the European Football Association), the Brussels Court of Appeal (the Court of Appeal), issued an important decision refusing to refer the dispute to arbitration despite the existence of arbitration clauses providing for the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).READ MORE

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September 13, 2018 In Applicable law(s), Jurisdictional issues By Pietro Ortolani

After Token Rush: International Litigation and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) – Part 2

This article considers some of the international litigation questions that arise out of Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

In the first part of this article, we discussed in particular issues relating to jurisdiction. We now continue this discussion while also considering questions relating to applicable laws.

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Issues of jurisdiction are made somewhat more complex by the circumstance that many ICO’s general terms and conditions (TnC) contain clauses that may directly or indirectly affect the jurisdiction of courts. In this respect, the most obviously relevant type of agreement are forum selection clauses; in the case of the Tezos ICO, for instance, the TnC specified that “(a)ny dispute arising out of or in connection with the creation of the [tokens] and the development and execution of the Tezos Network shall be exclusively and finally settled by the ordinary courts of Zug, Switzerland“. As noted by the District Judge denying the motion to dismiss, this is best understood not as a “clickwrap agreement“, but as a “browsestrap” one: when subscribing, investors were not asked to check a box indicating consent to the TnC, but simply enabled to retrieve the TnC on the website advertising the ICO. In order to determine whether the forum selection clause is binding, hence, a case-by-case assessment is necessary, evaluating whether – given the circumstances of the case, such as the structure of the website – it is reasonable to expect that users in general accessed the TnC, and whether the claimant(s) in particular had any demonstrable knowledge of the contents of the TnC.READ MORE

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September 12, 2018 In Jurisdictional issues By Pietro Ortolani

After Token Rush: International Litigation and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) – Part 1

Between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, many things that we thought were impossible happened. Among them was the meteoric rise of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), an unprecedented development in the fields of venture capital, blockchain technologies and corporate finance law. This post considers some of the international litigation questions that arise out of the phenomenon, especially in light of the recent proliferation of ICO-related court cases.READ MORE

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September 11, 2018 In Uncategorized By Quentin Decleve

International Litigation Blog Expands to New Contributors and Opens Twitter Account

Dear Readers,

As summer is fading away and people get back to business after their holiday period, I am happy to announce two significant developments to the International Litigation Blog.

First, I am delighted to welcome five outstanding new contributors with significant expertise in the field of transnational litigation and arbitration:

– Isabelle Van Damme (counsel at Van Bael & Bellis and former référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union);

– Pietro Ortolani (Radboud University, Nijmegen, and former researcher in international law and arbitration at the Max Planck Institute, Luxembourg);

– Holger Hestermeyer (King’s College, London);

– Julian Arato (Brooklyn Law School); and

– Ricardo Ampuero Llerena (President of the Peruvian Commission on Investments).

These five contributors will be invited on a periodic basis to share with us some thoughts and developments on topics of their choice relating to international litigation and arbitration. Given their impressive knowledge and experience in those fields, I am confident that we will all greatly benefit from their insights and views. For more information about them, I invite you to read their full biographies in the “About The Authors” section above.

To give you a taste, Pietro will open the floor tomorrow with a contribution covering the international litigation aspects arising in the context of blockchain and Initial Coin Offering.

Second, I am very happy to announce the launch of a Twitter account which will allow the blog to gain visibility. The goal of this Twitter account is to facilitate the sharing of blog posts and other significant news in the field of international litigation. So, don’t hesitate to follow us there too.

Happy reading!

Quentin

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