By Dr Can Eken and Peilin Chen Investment arbitration is expensive, and third-party funding now forms part of ISDS practice. Funding, however, comes at a price. When a funded claimant succeeds, it will usually owe its funder a success-based funding fee, which can be substantial. In commercial arbitration, tribunals have already permitted such fees to be recovered from the losing party, most notably in Essar v Norscot and Tenke v ...

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By Nick Rowles-Davies In August 2025, Anthropic did something unprecedented. The AI company agreed to pay $1.5 billion, with preliminary court approval following in September, to settle copyright claims from authors whose books trained its Claude chatbot. At roughly $3,000 per book for an estimated 500,000 works, the settlement represents the first major resolution in the escalating legal battle over whether AI companies can use copyrighted material freely for training ...

By Gabriel Olearnik Let’s start with an old Irish story – that of a high king wounded in battle. Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann loses his hand in war; and in a world where wholeness meant sovereignty, the wound was not merely personal. The ruler had to be pristine, so this loss meant he could no longer rule. The solution is strange, surgical, and mythic: a silver hand is ...

By Nick Rowles-Davies How blockchain technology is democratising one of the most lucrative, and exclusive, corners of the investment world. A Market Poised for Transformation The intersection of blockchain technology and alternative investments continues to expand into previously inaccessible corners of finance. Among the most promising frontiers is litigation finance, a multi-billion dollar asset class that has historically been the exclusive preserve of hedge funds, institutional investors, and the ultra-wealthy ...

By Stuart Hills The holiday season has passed once more, presents have been opened, mulled wine has been drunk, Olde Lang Syne has been sung and New Year promises made – and by now many of these same promises broken. So it seems only fitting to stick with one of those January traditions to attempt to predict what the New Year holds, in particular for the UK legal finance industry ...

By Nick Rowles-Davies On 2 June 2025, the Civil Justice Council (CJC) published its Final Report on litigation funding in England and Wales. Commissioned by the Lord Chancellor in the wake of the UK Supreme Court’s landmark decision in R (on the application of PACCAR Inc and others) (Appellants) v Competition Appeal Tribunal and others (Respondents) 2023 UKSC 28. The report is the most comprehensive examination of litigation funding in a ...

By David Standish Court Appointed Receivership (“CAR”) is a flexible, protective measure under English law aimed at the securing, preserving, and potentially recovering assets of a company, an individual (or both) which are subject to Court proceedings. The English Court has the jurisdiction to appoint a Court Appointed Receiver (“Receiver”) in all cases where it is persuaded that it is just and convenient to do so. This is a ...

Class Representative in Ennis v Apple — Competition Appeals Tribunal The litigation funding industry has evolved dramatically over the past 25 years, and nowhere has this evolution been more visible than in the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT). At the heart of one of the most significant competition law cases currently before the CAT stands Dr. Sean F. Ennis, an expert on management, strategy and economic policy whose unique background spans ...