Launched in 2019, the Blockchain lab hosts a series of research activities and scientific events around Blockchain Technology and its application in Law and Regulation.

The SmartLawHub at the Law Department of HEC Paris is launching the BlockchainLab in 2019.

The Lab will offer a series of workshops and seminars about Blockchain Technology and its applications in Law and Regulation.

If you want to receive information about the BlockchainLab please subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email Olfa Mzita (mzita@hec.fr) with the title: BlockchainLab_mailinglist

For any informations related to the BlockchainLab, contact

Dr. Delphine Dogot, Research Fellow at HEC Paris.

BlockchainLab #1 SMART CONTRACT AND LEGAL ENGINEERING. 

BlockchainLab #2: SMART CONTRACT AND NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

We will discuss the paper presented by J. G Allen, Wrapped and Stacked: ‘Smart Contracts’ and the Interaction of Natural and Formal Language

Monday March  11/2019, 3pm-4.30pm, HEC Paris, 1 rue de la Libération 78351 Jouy-en-Josas

Comments by: Prof. Michalis Vazirgiannis, Ecole Polytechnique, Laboratorie d’Informatique, DaScim

& Prof. David Restrepo, Law&Tax Department, HEC Paris, SmartLawHub

Seminar jointly organized by the BlockchainLab at HEC Paris & the EDGAM project at Sciences Po Law School

This article explores ‘smart contracts’ from first principles: What they are, whether they are properly called ‘contracts’, and what issues they raise for national contract law. A ‘smart’ contract purports to record contractual promises in language which is both intelligible to human beings and (ultimately) executable by machines. The formalisation of contracting language that this entails is, I argue, the most important aspect for lawyers—just as important as the automation of contractual performance. Rather than taking a doctrinal approach focused on the presence of traditional indicia of contract formation, I examine the nature of contracts as legal entities created by words and documents. In most cases, smart contracts will be ‘wrapped in paper’ and nested in a national legal system. Borrowing from the idiom of computer science, I introduce the term ‘contract stack’ to highlight the complex nature of contracts as legal entities incorporating different ‘layers’, including speech acts by the parties in both natural and formal languages as well as mandatory legal rules. It is the interactions within this contract stack that will be most important to the development of contract law doctrines appropriate to smart contracts. To illustrate my points, I explore a few issues that smart contracts might raise for English contract law. I touch on the questions of illegality, jurisdiction, and evidence, but my focus in this paper is on exploring issues in contract law proper. This contribution should be helpful not only to lawyers attempting to understand smart contracts, but to those involved in coding smart contracts—and writing the languages used to code them.

Blockchain #3 BLOCKCHAIN AND COPYRIGHT

We will discuss the paper presented by Guido Noto La Diega, Northumbria University, “Can Permission less Blockchains be Regulated and Resolve Some of the Problems of Copyright Law? »

Monday March 18/2019, 3pm

In October 2018, the European Parliament passed a resolution on distributed ledger technologies that recognised blockchains’ potential to disrupt copyright and creative industries. The aim of this chapter is to examine blockchain technologies and provide an assessment of their disruptive potential upon the legal sphere of intellectual property, and in particular copyright in the music industry. In order to do so, this chapter will start off by clarifying that the blockchain does not exist, because there are several different types of blockchains and, accordingly, different legal and regulatory issues are involved. After identifying the type of permissionless blockchain that is analysed in this chapter – that is permissionless, Turing complete, open, distributed, peer-to-peer, transparent, tamper resistant and censorship resistant –, we move on to identify the definitional and non-definitional features of blockchain technologies. For the blockchain to unleash its disruptive potential, it must be clarified whether it complies with existing laws and whether new regulations are needed. Should existing regulations be found insufficient, only then a serious discussion around new regulations could be started and this should take into account the necessity not to stifle innovation, the level of development of the relevant technologies, the importance of involving all the stakeholders and to place the discussion at a supra-national level. The focus of the chapter is to critically assess whether public permissionless blockchains can be used to disrupt intellectual property law by resolving some of the problems in copyright law, with particular regard to the issues of copyright registration and infringement. It will be shown how the blockchains can resolve the registration issues by allowing forms of tamper-resistant, censorship-resistant, user-friendly, and privacy-friendly copyright registration. As to infringement, the blockchains can prevent it by making it easier for copyright owners to track the use of their works and for music consumers and new intermediaries such as Spotify and iTunes to identify the owners, seek a license, and pay the royalties. It is perhaps too soon to conclude that a 10-year-old technology will ultimately disrupt copyright, but there are already some indications that the Ethereum-type blockchains’ features will radically change copyright by fixing some of its most urgent problems.

BlockchainLab #4: DISTRIBUTED ACCOUNTABILITY: CSR ON THE BLOCKCHAIN

Closed workshop convening professionals involved in the development of Blockchain applications of CSR mechanisms,  with a discussion by legal academics. 

 18 or 19 April 2019

Blockchain technology is opening new worlds of possibility in many areas of social, political and economic activity. By making transactions and information incorruptible, Blockchain has the potential to reinvent stability and trust in the global legal and regulatory architecture.Corporate Social Responsibility is one of the areas in which blockchain technology promises new forms of transparency, accountability and compliance across jurisdictions and entities. Global supply chain management could be given a new youth and force by the integration of process and compliance requirements through distributed ledgers.

But what are the challenges of the blockchain revolution in CSR? What are the different modalities of CSR implementation through blockchain technologies? What is blockchain changing in the global regulatory and legal landscape? What are the difficulties and opportunities perceived by companies and other global supply chains stakeholders invested in these projects?

This closed half-day workshop creates a space to discuss and evaluate these challenges and offers a unique opportunity to cross-fertilize practitioners’ experiences and academic input in law and computer science.

The BlockchainLab contributes to the ACT Project Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies lead by the

Laboratoire de Cyberjustice de l’Université de Montréal and funded by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.