Knowledge

Over the past fortnight, sanctions have dominated news cycles around the world. In an effort to deter Russia’s ongoing military incursions into Ukrainian territory, the world’s major economies have adopted a range of far-reaching and hard-hitting economic sanctions which target individuals and financial entities in Russia, Belarus and two separatist pro-Russian territories in Ukraine.

As blockchain use-cases such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have surged in popularity over the last few years, serious concerns have been raised about the energy and resources required to maintain and use them.

In one of the most highly publicised administrative law cases in recent history, Novak Djokovic’s case in the Australian Federal Circuit Court shines a light on the important but often overlooked role of judicial review in the Australian legal system, and the power of procedural fairness and reasonableness in overturning government decisions.

Moulis Legal is excited to announce a legal first for Australia. On the back of our work with a number of trailblazing blockchain projects, our technology law team has embraced distributed-ledger technology and is offering our legal services in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Australia has now given greater impetus to the efforts of the international community to stamp out human rights abuse and criminal activities by way of the passage of the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Magnitsky-Style and Other Thematic Sanctions) Act 2021. The new law better describes the purposes for which the government may sanction foreign individuals and entities.

As we have previously discussed, there is significant interplay between blockchain technologies and intellectual property law. In an earlier article we suggested that, although non-fungible token (NFT) and crypto technology is new and fast-moving, existing laws are well-placed to clearly identify and enforce rights and obligations in this space.

A good domain name is a critical part of any modern business identity. Although there is an almost limitless supply of domain names, all of which perform the same function (i.e. identifying online resources), some are definitely more desirable than others.

The World Anti-Doping Code (WADA Code) has traditionally applied the legal principle of strict liability to anti-doping rule violations. Sanctioning of athletes by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) may take into account factors which could be considered unintentional doping.

The recent announcement that Brisbane will host the 2032 Olympics is an exciting opportunity not just for Queensland but for the whole of Australia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘Brisbane’ was one of the top five trending Google searches on the day of the announcement.

In recent years, blockchains have been accused of imposing an unsupportable burden on the environment. The energy needed to operate Bitcoin alone has been compared to the national requirements of a small country.