The rapid expansion of Islamic fintech has introduced new possibilities for delivering Sharia-compliant financial services through digital platforms and blockchain-based smart contracts. However, this technological development also raises significant legal challenges concerning Sharia compliance, contractual enforceability, and cross-jurisdictional regulatory consistency. This article examines the legal issues surrounding the standardization of Islamic fintech contracts, focusing on both traditional Islamic financial contracts and their emerging smart contract equivalents. It argues that standardization in Islamic fintech is not merely a technical exercise aimed at improving efficiency and scalability, but a normative legal process that determines how Sharia principles are interpreted and operationalized within digital financial systems. Drawing on comparative insights from jurisdictions such as England, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia, the article demonstrates that common law and hybrid legal systems often prioritize contractual certainty and governing law clauses while struggling to accommodate Sharia as an independent normative framework. The article contends that meaningful standardization of Islamic fintech contracts requires a layered governance approach combining standardized contractual archetypes, Sharia supervisory oversight, technical auditability, and judicial review to ensure both legal enforceability and substantive Sharia compliance.
This article undertakes a comparative doctrinal analysis of the patentability of artificial-intelligence (AI)-related inventions under Indian and UK patent law. Between 2023 and early 2026, the Delhi High Court, in a series of decisions culminating in Kroll Information Assurance, LLC v Controller General of Patents , refined the ‘technical effect/technical contribution’ threshold that governs the exclusion of ‘a computer programme per se’ under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970. That threshold has since been codified, with AI-specific illustrations, in the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions, 2025, issued on 29 July 2025. The United Kingdom's position developed less smoothly. In Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents , a permissive first-instance ruling was reversed by the Court of Appeal, which reaffirmed the primacy of the long-standing four-step Aerotel test, before the Supreme Court, on 11 February 2026, overruled Aerotel altogether and adopted an approach modelled on the European Patent Office's ‘any hardware’ doctrine. This article argues that, notwithstanding these divergent statutory architectures and procedural histories, India and the United Kingdom have arrived at a structurally similar solution: a low, largely formal threshold for patent eligibility, followed by a substantive technical–character enquiry applied at a later analytical stage.
In 2024, Hong Kong enacted the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which repealed the British-era sedition provisions and created a new framework of sedition offences. The Ordinance expands the definition of ‘seditious intention’ and differentiates mens rea requirements by the type of prohibited conduct. This article evaluates whether the new sedition offences strike a constitutionally acceptable balance between safeguarding national security and protecting freedom of expression. It is argued that while the offences are broadly justifiable in light of Hong Kong's heightened national security risks over the past decade, several limbs of the definition of ‘seditious intention’ are only weakly connected to those risks. Targeted statutory reform is recommended to better protect freedom of expression without undermining the legitimate aim of safeguarding national security.
With the evolution of medical technology, surrogacy has become a favorable alternative for couples to create a family. Yet, section 17 of the Human Reproductive Technology Ordinance (Cap 561) prohibits commercial surrogacy in Hong Kong (HK), prompting many couples to seek paid surrogacy arrangements overseas. This practice creates complexities upon their return to HK with their surrogate-born child. Two significant cases, FH v WB and CS v SW involve cross-border commercial surrogacy arrangements where commissioning parents pursued parental orders under section 12 of the Parent Child Ordinance (Cap 429) to acquire legal parenthood. Although the time limit for the application had expired and unreasonable surrogate expenses were incurred, amounting to breaches, the Court of First Instance (CFI) adopted a lenient attitude and granted a parental order in both cases, prioritizing the welfare principle. This note will first go through the HK legislation and these two decisions, then compare the CFI's reasoning and policy considerations. The CFI faces challenges in reconciling the legislation and its precedents, resulting in legal gaps that indirectly allow commercial international surrogacy arrangements. The discussion will also delve in to potential solutions to effectively regulate commercial surrogacy, such as local legislative reforms or adopting international conventions.
