The Government introduced the Digital Assets Bill into Parliament in September 2024 to confirm the existence of a third category of personal property, into which crypto-tokens and other assets could fall. The Law Commission’s digital assets report published in June 2023, concluded that certain digital assets, including crypto-tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are capable of attracting personal property rights. However, as they do not fit into the usual category of personal property, The Commision recommended that legislation should confirm the existence of a ‘third’ category of personal property.

Burkhard Schafer, Professor of Computational Legal Theory at Edinbugh Law School and Director of the SCRIPT Centre for IT and Intellectual Property law, was asked to share his extensive expertise in this area and consider the impact of the current draft on the UK economy and the legal status of digital assets.

DECaDE having previously submitted a response to a Law Commission consultation on the draft Bill, aimed to act as a conduit between industry partners and the legislators by organising workshops on the ownership of digital assets that explained the proposed legal changes, to gain an understanding of their views.  At the committee meeting, Burkhard highlighted DECaDEs work with our industry partners in the creative and heritage sectors and their use of Non-Fungible Tokens to certify ownership and authenticity; technology often not meeting their requirements. He highlighted the enthusiasm from the creative sectors for the new Digital Assets Bill which could open the doors to better industry applications of ownership technologies.

Watch the committee in action here: Parliamentlive.tv – Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill [HL] Special Public Bill Committee

Read more about the bill here Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill [HL] – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament

The Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE) is a five-year EPSRC funded Next Stage Digital Economy Centre, part of the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing exploring how data-centric technologies, such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and artificial Intelligence (AI) could transform our future digital economy through decentralised platforms.

Read more about our work here DECaDE | The Centre for the Decentralised Economy