Intellectual property, virtual assets and technology
We advise on claims and applications in support of, and in defence of, proprietary rights in trademarks, patents and copyright, and on the technology agreements that sit around them — licensing, development, hosting and data arrangements. We advise licence applicants, operating virtual asset service providers, token issuers and their investors under the Virtual Asset and Initial Token Offering Services Act 2021 (“the VAITOS Act”).
Our work covers the full licensing lifecycle:
(a) Licence class scoping and applications across the five VASP licence classes — Virtual Asset Broker-Dealer (Class M), Virtual Asset Wallet Services (Class O), Virtual Asset Custodian (Class R), Virtual Asset Advisory Services (Class I) and Virtual Asset Market Place (Class S) — including hybrid models requiring multiple classes and the capital requirements that follow
(b) Initial token offerings: registration of ITO issuers with the FSC, white papers and offer documentation, commercial agreements, and the governing body sign-off and ongoing disclosure obligations the Act attaches to them.
(c) Token classification: opinions on whether an instrument is a security token regulated under the Securities Act 2005 or a virtual asset under the VAITOS Act — the threshold question that determines the licence, the offer document regime and the investor protection framework — including hybrid, asset-backed and Shariah-compliant structures.
(d) FSC Rules compliance: capital and financial requirements, custody of client assets, client disclosure, cybersecurity, publication of advertisements, statutory returns and the travel rule.
(e) AML/CFT frameworks under the Financial Intelligence and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2002: customer due diligence, MLRO arrangements, business risk assessments, travel rule implementation, KYC/AML handbooks and independent audit support, and;
(f) Cross-border structuring of Africa- and Asia-facing virtual asset business through Mauritius, including interaction with foreign regimes such as the EU’s MiCA regulation. A token project is, in substance, a capital raising, a corporate structure and a regulatory perimeter question at once. The practice works alongside the firm’s capital markets, corporate and Islamic finance practices accordingly.