Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

In February 2022, a coalition of states froze approximately US$300 billion in foreign currency reserves accumulated by the Central Bank of Russia. These assets soon came into focus as the likeliest source for the provision of reparations that Russia owes Ukraine. This presentation traces the evolution of the discussion about the fate of frozen Russian state assets through three main phases. In particular, it outlines how public international law debates were ultimately displaced by the EU’s efforts at financial engineering. Unable to definitely resolve the international law controversies, governments are considering proposals for the collateralisation of Russian foreign currency reserves that are aimed to achieve what is at first sight impossible: giving this money to Ukraine without depriving Russia of it.
Anton Moiseienko is an Associate Professor of Law at the Australian National University (ANU) Law School. He specialises in financial crime and economic sanctions, with particular expertise in global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) regulation and in Australian, UK, EU, US and UN sanctions law and practice. He has developed and taught postgraduate courses in Financial Crime Law and Transnational Anti-Corruption Laws. Anton has advised the World Bank, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Basel Institute on Governance, prepared expert opinions for law enforcement agencies, and is regularly sought as a commentator by Australian and international media.
He is the author of Doing Business with Criminals (Cambridge University Press, 2025), described by reviewers as 'an indispensable guide' to the global AML/CTF system and a 'classic for years to come', and Corruption and Targeted Sanctions (Brill, 2019) the first-ever monograph on the legal and policy implications of ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions. He has also co-edited four books, including Research Handbook on Transnational Crime (2019); Policing Transnational Crime (2020); Criminal Networks and Law Enforcement (2020); and Transnational Crime: European and Chinese Perspectives (2019).
He is currently working on a book entitled The Kremlin’s Treasure: Russia’s Frozen $300 Billion and Reparations for Ukraine (Bristol University Press, forthcoming).
Chair: Prof Jan Klabbers
The Friday Lunchtime Lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
This lecture was part of the Friday Lunchtime lecture series which took place on Friday 30 October 2026.

Speaker: Professor Martin Senftleben, University of Amsterdam
Abstract: With its 2026 judgments in Pelham II (case C-590/23) and Inter IKEA Systems (C-298/23), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has laid new foundations for the reconciliation of copyright and trade mark protection with freedom of expression. Considering the equal status of the right to (intellectual) property and freedom of expression in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, these rulings raise the question whether the approach taken by the CJEU offers sufficient breathing space and legal certainty to enable users to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Do the balancing factors and legal requirements established by the Court ensure effective protection of freedom of expression in copyright and trade mark contexts? Do the different legal instruments used by the Court – specific parody and pastiche exceptions in copyright; the open-ended due cause defence in trade mark law – lead to different balancing frameworks? And, if so, how can national courts navigate those differences in cases where copyright and trade mark rights overlap? For background reading, please see: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40319-024-01527-8.
Biography: Martin is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. He also works as an Of Counsel at Bird & Bird, The Hague. His activities focus on the reconciliation of private intellectual property rights with competing public interests of a social, cultural or economic nature. Current research topics include generative AI and author remuneration; open science and digital autonomy of researchers; copyright metadata improvement and recommender systems; behavioural advertising and consumer empowerment; normative concepts of “average consumer” in AI and sustainability contexts; the development of sustainable intellectual property policy. Professor Senftleben is a member of the Benelux Council for Intellectual Property and the Copyright Law Committee of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. He provided advice to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in copyright, trademark and unfair competition projects. For the European Commission, he prepared studies on data access and reuse in research contexts. He is a member of the Trademark Law Institute (TLI), the European Copyright Society (ECS) and the Executive Committee of the Association littéraire et artistique internationale (ALAI). His numerous publications include The Copyright/Trademark Interface (2020), Generative AI and Author Remuneration (2023) and Fashion Upcycling and Trademark Infringement – A Circular Economy/Freedom of the Arts Approach (2025).
For more information see:
https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Associate Professor Louise Damkjær Christensen, Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark
Abstract: The digitalization of payments offers unprecedented convenience, though digitalization has simultaneously birthed a "vulnerability gap." The paper will re-examine the definition of ‘vulnerable consumers’, moving beyond traditional demographics to include those suffering from digital exclusion and situational cognitive load. It then scrutinizes the legislative "safety net" provided by the new Payment Services Regulation, with a specific focus on measures to protect vulnerable consumers. The paper argues that regulatory intervention to protect vulnerable consumers also protect average consumers. This supports the paper’s argument that vulnerable consumers should be treated as a dynamic term which consumers can move in and out of over time.
Speaker Bio: Professor Lousi Damkjær Christensen is Associate Professor at the Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark. Her research is focused on financial regulation, particularly how to implement new innovative market actors into current regulation. She applies economic theory and market considerations to create a link between the market and current law. This is done to explain the state of current law, and to find solutions for optimising the regulatory framework.
3CL runs the 3CL Sullivan & Cromwell Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.
For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:
http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

In today’s episode, we are joined by Samuel Soh, Qinglan Du, and Joyce Mau to discuss their experiences pursuing postgraduate law degrees.
Samuel completed the BCL at Oxford, Joyce pursued an LLM at Harvard, and Qinglan completed an LLM at Cambridge.
We discuss how to choose the right master’s programme, funding opportunities, the academic experience, key lessons learned, what sets each programme apart, social life, and much more.
A huge thank you to Samuel, Qinglan, and Joyce for taking the time to join us and share their experiences on the podcast!

Speaker: Dr Julia Möller-Klapperich, Freie Universität Berlin
Abstract: Art is, first and foremost, something deeply personal, yet at the same time a form of communication that is relevant to society. Copyright law therefore balances between the interests of the artist and those of society. If something has relevance within a market economy, it can in general be monetised. Whilst innovation is increasingly understood politically as the ability to capitalise a personal or societal need, the democratising effect that characterises art as a human phenomenon and as a space for societal resonance is visibly eroding, giving way to a digitalisation-driven centralisation of what is publicly perceptible and, with it, a concentration of power on an unprecedented scale. Legal science must counter this development, to develop meaningful concepts of innovation through interdisciplinary discourse, and to design legal rules that take appropriate account of the social functions of art and AI.
The issue of memorisation lies at the heart of this conflict and is therefore highly controversial. The European Commission has recently launched a consultation on the challenges and way forward regarding the impact of technology on copyright. While the legislature is assessing the situation, courts — including those in Germany — must decide on various cases based on current legislation. It remains unclear whether representing information extracted from copyright-protected works in an AI model constitutes a reproduction under copyright law. In two notable rulings, German courts have ruled in favour of a collecting society that initiated legal proceedings against AI providers. The decisions focus on establishing the facts and proving a physical reproduction as depicted in the model. However, the problem is that due to the technical functioning of the model, this physical reproduction cannot be identified within it. For this reason, the literature considers that, at least in a technical sense, no reproduction has taken place. This talk attempts to shift the discussion from establishing the facts to legal interpretation in cases where the facts cannot be sufficiently clarified. This approach is based on the balance of interests embodied in copyright law. Furthermore, the allocation of responsibilities between the courts and the legislature in addressing unclear technological issues is considered in the assessment.
Biography: Dr. Julia Möller-Klapperich, LL.M., is the Academic Director of the Master's programme in Business, Competition and Regulatory Law at Freie Universität Berlin, where she is also a Habilitandin. She holds a Master's degree from Dresden University of Technology and a PhD from the Technical University of Freiberg. Prior to joining FU Berlin, she was a research associate at the Scads.AI AI competency centre Dresden/Leipzig. Her main research focus is the regulation of emerging technology markets.
For more information see:
https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars