• blockchain
• data act
• digital signatures
• dispute resolution
• eIDAS
• EU law
• GDPR
• intellectual property licensing
• oracles
• permissioned blockchains.
• smart contracts
• smart licences
• UK law

This dissertation assesses whether smart licences, which are royalty calculation logic clauses expressed in code and executed on a distributed ledger, can satisfy the requirements of legal validity and enforceability for intellectual property licensing under EU and UK law. It combines doctrinal analysis of contract formation, formalities and remedies with an examination of evidence, data protection, confidentiality, technical properties of blockchain architectures, digital signatures, and oracles. The study shows that enforceability depends on hybridisation: human-readable legal text, executed with appropriate electronic signature standards and clear governing law and dispute resolution clauses, must be cryptographically bound to the on-chain logic that computes royalties and coordinates payments. Particular emphasis is placed on Chapter 4, which distils safeguards into operational design choices: the preference for permissioned ledgers in licensing settings; stoppable execution, access controls and audit-grade logging aligned with the EU Data Act; qualified or advanced e-signatures mapped to specific acts of assent, including separate approval for onerous terms where required; governance for updates and emergency pauses; resilient, attestable oracle inputs for usage and sales data; confidentiality by design through off-chain storage and hash-linking; and evidentiary readiness through structured logs capable of court-ordered preservation and disclosure. The principal contribution is a pragmatic compliance framework and accompanying technical patterns that reduce transaction costs and improve auditability while remaining compatible with GDPR constraints and the evidentiary and remedial tools of ordinary courts. The thesis, therefore, rejects “code-is-law” exceptionalism and instead specifies when and how code can serve law in real-world IP licensing.