The Metaverse

BigTech, creative games and interactive entertainment businesses, infrastructure providers, consumer markets businesses, and a whole range of other potential stakeholders are now considering what the Metaverse will mean for them. Will it be a virtual place where our digital and physical lives come together? Will it be the platform that replaces the Internet? What issues will convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, non-fungible tokens, distributed ledger technology and smart contracts within the Metaverse give rise to? Will there be more than one Metaverse? And who gets to control it?

There are many opportunities for businesses in the Metaverse. There are also many challenges. In a race between incumbents and new entrants, a key issue is: whose business model will prevail and whose will be disrupted?

In a thought-provoking and animated discussion, we bring together a panel of industry stakeholders, in-house counsel, a professor of computer science and our antitrust, data and privacy, technology and intellectual property lawyers to consider:

• Who are the key stakeholders?
• How will the Metaverse develop?
• What will be required technologically (massively large databases, standards, etc)?
• The opportunities for business (including for investment and for the creative games and interactive entertainment industry)
• The legal and regulatory challenges to be navigated

Guest speakers:

• Dr Jo Twist OBE, CEO of Ukie (the trade association for the UK's creative games and interactive entertainment industry)
• Craig Salm, Chief Legal Counsel, Grayscale
• Professor Peter McBurney, Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Informatics, King's College London, and Co-head of Technology Consulting, Norton Rose Fulbright
• Partner, BitKraft