The Faculty of Law of the Western University of Timișoara is running between April 19-22, 2021, a series of courses on "Digital Markets and Private Law", with Prof. Rainer Kulms, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law from Hamburg (Germany).
Constant and prestigious collaborator of the faculty, Mr. Rainer Kulms invites the masters students of the programs to these lectures European Union Law and Business law, as well as the doctoral students of the faculty, using the resources of the elearning.e-uvt.ro platform for the presentation.
A description of the courses is available, in English, in the following:
Digital Markets and Private Law
Digitization challenges established attitudes towards law. The EU Commission's Digital Finance Package is as yet the latest regulatory attempt to keep pace with newly evolving markets. The Commission's proposals for regulatory intervention are based on the tacit assumption that private law systems will accommodate potential shortcomings of regulation. This class will explore how digitization impacts traditional concepts of formation of contracts, and property law notions of assets, as platform solutions and blockchain technology have come to test the evolutionary potential of private law.
When contracts are digitally formed, offer and acceptance are processed automatically. Electronic signatures and documents play an important role. But once smart contracts and artificial intelligence are employed, the law of contracts will have to change even more dramatically as robots and autonomous systems appear to play an active role. This will impact the structure of contractual duties and tort liability towards third parties. Data are non-physical, even if they stand for digital value stored electronically on a ledger. Practitioners emphasize the need for digital assets which can be traded like any other commodity, creditor-safe in insolvency scenarios. Based on a combination of legal theory and case studies, this class assesses aspects of e-commerce, electronic contracting, payment services and outsourcing strategies, crowdfunding, robo-advice and platform models. The analysis will then address the legal fall-out of blockchain technology and crypto-assets, before the focus is on regulatory sandboxes and potential conflicts with data protection law.
A reader and slides are available to facilitate orientation in this online class.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Lucian Bercea
Dean of the Faculty of Law of the West University in Timișoara
