Archive: August 2022

Australia has a vibrant InsurTech ecosystem and similarities between the UK and Australian insurance markets, together with the promise of sunny weather, make the land down under a great option for InsurTechs looking to set up shop abroad.

The long awaited details with respect to cross border data transfer under the China Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) have very recently been published by the Chinese authorities.

In our previous publication, we discussed the legal obligations and procedural considerations surrounding maintaining records of privacy incidents. While the specific obligations vary by jurisdiction, maintaining some form of a record that tracks privacy incidents is a statutory obligation for private-sector organizations subject to Quebec, Alberta, or federal laws. Organizations should also be aware of sector-specific statutory obligations which may apply to them, for example in health or financial services industries.

In Benjamin Moore & Co. v. Attorney General of Canada, 2022 FC 92311, the Federal Court of Canada set aside the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s (CIPO) refusal of patent applications for two computer-implemented inventions relating to colour selection methods using experimentally derived relationships for colour harmony and colour emotion (the Federal Court of Canada remitted Canadian Patent Applications No. 2,695,130 and No. 2,695,146, directed to a “Colour Selection System”).

The explosion of activity and interest in “the metaverse” is now giving rise to disputes about that realm. Yet paradoxically these disputes have begun to take shape in the courts of our physical world.

On 28 July 2022, the European Central Bank (ECB) published a Working Paper on the optimal quantity of CBDC in a bank based economy.

On 18 July 2022, the UK Government put forward proposals on the future regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The publications include: (i) National AI Strategy – AI Action Plan (Action Plan); and (ii) a policy paper, ‘Establishing a Pro-Innovation Approach to Regulating AI’ (Policy Paper or Pro-Innovation Approach).

Those who have forgotten to choose a thriller for their summer holiday reading can breathe a sigh of relief; the Law Commission has come to the rescue by publishing its 549-page consultation paper on the future of digital assets. Spoiler alert: the Law Commission suggests that, while English law has demonstrated a degree of flexibility in accommodating the use (and regulating the misuse) of digital assets, now is the time to develop a coherent legal framework capable of dealing with all manner of digital assets, instead of relying on the iterative development of the common law. Such a framework would entail new legal fictions, and while the Law Commission’s proposals do not amount to an overhaul of English property law, they would, if implemented, result in fundamental changes.