Views
Non-Qualifying Ceremonies: The Futility of Foreign Registration of Islamic Marriages under English Law
This blog note is kindly provided by Dr. Muhammad Zubair Abbasi (Lecturer, School of Law, Royal Holloway, University of London; zubair.abbasi@rhul.ac.uk). It follows the author’s previous post on this topic, which was published earlier on this blog. Read more
A few takeaways from the Conclusions & Decisions of the HCCH governing body (CGAP – 2026 meeting): parentage/surrogacy, jurisdiction project, cross-border recognition and enforcement of protection orders and a Note on the Trusts Convention
This week the Conclusions & Decisions (C&D) of the HCCH governing body, the Council on General Affairs and Policy (CGAP or Council), were published. Click the links below for the relevant language versions (English, French and Spanish).
Although a wide range of topics were discussed, I would like to focus on four items: parentage/surrogacy project, the cross-border recognition and enforcement of protection orders, the jurisdiction project and a Note on the Trusts Convention.
In my view, the C&D are significant for two reasons. First, the work related to a possible new instrument of a long-standing topic at the HCCH has been concluded (without a Convention) and secondly, a “new” topic has been inserted into the agenda of the HCCH. For more information, see below. Read more
Muscles from Munich? How German Courts Might Stop US Companies from Violating Copyright through AI Training
Yesterday, the Regional Court of Munich (Landgericht München I) held a highly interesting oral hearing in a dispute brought by GEMA, a German collecting society representing composers, and Suno, a generative music AI company based in Cambridge, MA. The hearing was noteworthy, first, because it gave the public an opportunity to listen to numerous international hits, from Alphaville’s Forever Young to Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 (and their alleged copies created by Suno) in a courtroom; and secondly, because the dispute raises some interesting questions of private international law.
After GEMA had already scored a famous victory against OpenAI in November 2025, when the same chamber of the Munich Court had held that the company had been violating the copyrights of several artists and composers by reproducing their song texts, the present proceedings differed not just in scope (focusing on the musical arrangement rather than texts) but also in its international dimension. For the first time, the claimant explicitly included the use of the protected works for training that had happened (according to both parties) exclusively in the US.
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Research Fellowship at University College London
Proceedings of the 18th Jornadas ASADIP 2025 published
The proceedings of the 18th Jornadas ASADIP in Rio de Janeiro 2025 have been published. María Mercedes Albornoz César González, Jaime Moreno-Valle and Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm as editors have collected no less than 46 contributions (plus a prologue and a foreword) by authors from Latin America and elsewhere to the 800 page tome entitled “Imaginario regional – resonancia global. El derecho internacional privado interamericano y el escenario mundial”. Most are in Spanish or Portuguese, a few in English. They cover a vast array of topics, doctrinal and/or theoretical, structured along seven themes: (i) foundations, (ii) normative structure, (iii) procedure, (iv) substantive protections, (v) digitization, (vi) human rights, (vii) teaching of private international law. The volume once again demonstrates both the ambition and the high quality of private international law reasoning on the continent. It can, as can many other excellent OAS publications, be downloaded free of charge from the OAS website.
Reminder: Deadline for submitting proposals to the JPIL Conference in Zurich (30 June 2026)
As announced previously, the next Journal of Private International Law Conference will take place in Zurich on 1–3 April 2027. With the deadline for submitting proposals for papers to present at the conference, 30 June 2026, approaching fast, the organizers would like to remind everyone of the opportunity to submit a proposal. The same deadline also applies for the travel grants offered by the University of Zurich.
More information can be found on the conference website.