CPD Course: Disputes Involving Digital Property: Tracing, Freezing and Recovering Misappropriated and Stolen Cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Course Overview

Course Outline:

This three-hour seminar will consider the disputes which have arisen and may arise with regard to digital property, and the actions and remedies that may be available to reconcile them.

Disputes involving digital property have so far involved issues of contract, property, theft and fraud.  The evidential processes, actions and remedies available to assist in reconciling these disputes and obtaining compensation for or recovery of missing digital property have been considered in the light of one important consideration - is digital property really property.  Concerns have been raised that certain forms of digital property should be categorized as currencies or even non-property.

This seminar will consider these issues and disputes, and consider whether missing digital property should be identified as property and subject to the consequences of such identification.  This will include the ability to use evidential processes such as tracing to identify substitutions, and orders such as injunctions to freeze digital property in the hands of any possessor.  The seminar will consider whether equitable remedies such as the constructive trust may be suitable to effect recovery, or even if common law actions such as unjust enrichment may be developed to assist in the recovery of new forms of