Summer School - Blockchain: Best Ally or Worst Enemy to Antitrust, IP & Data Protection?, 8 - 12 July 2019, Netherlands

Blockchain: Best Ally or Worst Enemy to Antitrust, IP & Data Protection?

Blockchain is the biggest challenge faced by antitrust law in the last 20 years. The core features of this technology create numerous issues for our legal systems to the point of endangering them. This is very true for intellectual property law and digital privacy as well. This summer school, a world first, will address all of these challenges from two perspectives: blockchain as the best ally to our legal systems and blockchain as the ultimate evil to them.

Blockchains are ledgers on which transactions are registered. Open and distributed, these ledgers can record - manually or automatically - all sorts of transactions between users, and once they are recorded, these transactions are permanent and can be seen by all users, which is one of the reasons why blockchain can be trusted.

On top of being ledgers, most blockchains offer capabilities for software to run. These applications can be crypto-currencies (blockchain 1.0), smart contracts (blockchain 2.0) or all applications beyond currency and smart contracts (blockchain 3.0). Blockchain 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 are set to change the world, but it is necessarily to make the world a better place?

The answer to that question could be negative, mainly because blockchain creates serious legal issues and put our legal systems at risk, which we need to address. In fact, blockchain creates three main issues: (i) how to identify illegal practices, (ii) how to identify the authors of these practices and (iii) how to remedy these practices. We will discuss these challenges through competition law, IP and data protection. This summer school, a world first, will address all of these challenges from two perspectives: blockchain as the best ally to our legal systems and blockchain as the ultimate evil to them. The world is about to change, here's your chance to get ahead. 

Course director

Dr. Thibault Schrepel

Lecturers

To be announced.

Target audience

This summer school is designed for legal experts, more precisely, for master students (enrolled in a law degree), lawyers, practitioners, judges, academics, government representatives, policy officers and anyone interested in understanding how blockchain will change our societies as well as our legal systems. Technical knowledge of blockchain is not required (no worries).

Costs

Housing through Utrecht Summer School

Application

For this course you are required to upload the following documents when applying:

•  C.V.

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.