Month: May 2025

UK-EU Reset May Break International Law

May 21, 2025 / / 0 Comments

By Prof. David Collins

For a government that has continually emphasized the importance of upholding international law, even when it is evidently against the national interest (for example the relinquishing of the Chagos Islands), the UK’s EU ‘reset’ agreement is a baffling development. The UK has evidently succumbed to all of the EU’s demands, gaining little more than vague statements in relation to defence procurement and e-gates in airports, while giving away fishing rights for an astonishing twelve years, free movement of young adults as well as budgetary contributions. Each of these is arguably a rejection of UK voters’ wishes to leave the EU but do not in themselves put the UK in breach of the country’s international legal obligations. The new agreement’s dynamic alignment with the EU’s sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations on the other hand could well do this, potentially leading to claims from other treaty partners via international arbitration tribunals.

The new UK-EU reset agreement effectively creates a single market for agri-foods in which the UK agrees to follow EU regulations, the ultimate conformity to which lies at the discretion of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). This feature of the new arrangement was important for the EU because it ensures that the UK remains a captured market for its agricultural produce, preventing the UK from importing cheaper, better foods from other countries, ostensibly for the purpose of safeguarding public health.

It is bad enough that this worsens the choice available to British consumers from markets around the world. It is even more problematic, though, if, like Prime Minister Keir Starmer, one claims to be a supporter of and adherent to international law. This is because alignment with the EU’s regulations in this area may violate the terms of some of the UK’s recent Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). This includes the mega-regional Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which the UK joined after lengthy negotiations at the end of last year. The 12-nation CPTPP comprises 15 per cent of global GDP and some of the world’s fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific.

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The City Law School and KPUM: Building Bridges Through Mooting and Professional Development

May 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

By Michelle Lee Shu Ling*

   The United Kingdom and Eire Malaysian Law Students’ Union (KPUM) is proud to continue strengthening our collaboration with City Law School (CLS). Over the past few years, CLS has been a valued supporter of KPUM’s efforts to nurture the next generation of Malaysian lawyers, both academically and professionally.

  We are excited to share that CLS is now an official sponsor of KPUM, marking an important milestone in our relationship. This sponsorship recognises our shared commitment to empowering Malaysian law students through opportunities for advocacy training, practical experience, and professional development in the United Kingdom.

  CLS has been instrumental in supporting KPUM’s flagship events. We are deeply grateful to CLS for generously allowing KPUM to host our mooting competitions on their campus, not just once, but twice. Their hospitality and logistical support have enabled us to deliver high-quality events that provide our mooters with invaluable exposure to real-world legal practice.

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The AI Black Box Issue and Patent Disclosure

May 6, 2025 / / 0 Comments

by Prof Enrico Bonadio, Prof Eduardo Alonso (City St. George’s University of London), and Mr Vansh Tayal (Symbiosis Law School, Pune, India)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has notoriously been making inroads into the inventive process, from drug discovery to engineered systems, and beyond. The widely reported DABUS project is notorious for igniting a global legal and philosophical debate over whether AI can be recognised as an inventor under patent law. But patent applications for the DABUS inventions were rejected in several jurisdictions including UK, US, Germany, at the European Patent Office, and Australia, primarily because patent laws require that an inventor must be a natural person, not a machine or an AI system.

A less researched aspect of AI inventions and their intersection with patent regimes focuses on the disclosure requirement. As is known, patent laws around the world require an invention to be disclosed in a manner which is clear and complete enough to allow the expert in the field to reproduce it, as dictated by Article 29 of the WTO/TRIPS Agreement. Yet, many AI models, such as neural networks, operate in ways that are not fully understood even by their creators. This is the so-called ‘black box’ issue. While the input and output of the system can be observed, the internal logic or decision-making process is often inscrutable or cannot be described in human-understandable terms. In other words, even when inputs and outputs are known, the internal logic or parameters can be inscrutable to human observers​.

This lack of explainability often makes it impossible to provide the detailed, step-by-step descriptions required for patent disclosure​. IBM, for example, observes that “the input and output may be known … but the logic in between is in some respects unknown,” making AI inventions hard to fully disclose. And scholars such as Tabrez Ebrahim note that this lack of transparency – i.e. the difficulty of replicating an AI-constructed outcome – “profoundly … challenges disclosure theory in patent law”​.

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