This article was first published in Digital Asset.

“Immutable” is a term that is frequently used when people talk about blockchain and the benefit of using this technology for record-keeping.

On 29 April 2016, the Australian Government Treasury released a proposal paper that, among other things, proposed reforms to introduce an ipso facto moratorium (Proposal). This reform was foreshadowed in as part of the Australian Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda.

The anti-deprivation principle provides that “there cannot be a valid contract that a man’s property shall remain his until his bankruptcy, and, on the happening of that event, go over to someone else, and be taken away from his creditors”.

In September 2009 we reported on the first instance decision in Butters and ors v BBC Worldwide Ltd and ors, accessible here in which the Court held that contractual provisions in a joint venture agreement taken together with termination provisions in a licence of IP rights were void since the effect of those provisions on insolvency was to deprive creditors' access to assets and therefore contrary

In Butters and ors v BBC Worldwide Ltd and ors, decided on 20 August 2009, the Court held that contractual provisions in a joint venture agreement taken together with termination provisions in a licence of IP rights were void since the effect of those provisions on insolvency was to deprive creditors access to assets and therefore contrary to public policy in the light of insolvency laws.

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