Nigel Stone

Nigel is an accredited mediator, and has represented clients in more than 20 mediations with up to a dozen parties, frequently in major construction disputes involving millions of dollars.

He has a background in civil and criminal litigation. He has worked on cases where the amount in dispute has ranged down from $9.2 billion (Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers v Maan Al Sanea & Ors—also known as AHAB v Saad). Prior to that he worked at New Zealand’s largest law firm, and before then appeared in court as sole counsel for the Crown in more than 30 jury trials, as well as various appeals.

Nigel holds a master’s degree in corporate and commercial law with first class honours. He attended St John’s College at the University of Cambridge where he obtained a research degree in law (the equivalent of a DPhil). He has published various articles in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, and coedited the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law.

Nigel qualified as a New Zealand solicitor in 2004. He moved from the UK to the Cayman Islands in 2015.

John Delaney QC

A former Attorney-General of The Bahamas and one of Her Majesty’s Queens Counsel, John’s areas of practice are financial services law and regulation, corporate governance, business restructuring & insolvency, and commercial litigation.

He has also been advisor in several major acquisitions and mergers within The Bahamas, and also in acquisitions by or mergers with regional entities.

Highly valued by industry to navigate complexities and pitfalls to achieve strategic business objectives, John has held a range of non-executive directorships of financial institutions and has served as member and chair of audit committees. He currently serves as a non-executive director and audit committee member of RBC Financial (Caribbean) Limited, the regional parent of the Royal Bank of Canada’s interests in the jurisdictions comprising the Caribbean region. John has a history of national contribution and previously served on the Road Traffic Authority, National Insurance Board, Bahamas Financial Services Board, and has chaired The Bahamas Trade Commission.

He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the Institute of Directors, INSOL and STEP.

Peter Dengate Thrush

Peter is a leading New Zealand barrister sole (practicing from chambers, in the English tradition) specializing in intellectual and industrial property, information technology, Internet and competition causes. He is the former Board Chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which coordinates the naming system of the Internet. He is in his 37th year of legal practice, the past 22 years in sole practice at the independent bar. He is a New Zealand and Australian Registered Patent Attorney and a past foreign associate member of the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association, the International Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He is admitted to practice in Victoria, Australia. He also practices as a mediator and arbitrator.

Arbitration and Mediation

Peter has appeared for clients in a number of mediations in intellectual property cases, reaching successful outcomes for his clients. He has been appointed an Arbitrator under the NZ Arbitration Act 1996 on several occasions, including in a software development dispute involving the NZ government as a party, and a long-running copyright franchise dispute.

The Bar

Peter has appeared in New Zealand Courts at most levels, including the Privy Council (London), and in specialist tribunals such as the Taxation Review Authority and the Intellectual Property Office.

He is an expert in injunctions, including those obtained urgently, and ex parte. His cases include some of New Zealand’s leading authorities in their field, which reflect novel substantive and procedural developments in New Zealand law. Many involve complex scientific or technological facts. He has been instructed to appear by the Crown.

He is one of the few experts in New Zealand on “Internet law” as a specialist topic, including the application of existing law to the Internet, and the development of new laws to deal with, for example, the liability of ISPs for defamation or other content. He served on ICANN’s Working Group A, which developed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure (UDRP) for clashes between generic domain names and trade marks. He also served on InternetNZ’s Domain Name Dispute Resolution Committee, which crafted a dispute resolution service for .nz domain names. (See http://dnc.org.nz/story/30231-29-1.html )

He is a supporter of the Victoria University Alumni Association, and the Victoria Law School in general, participating in so-called “celebrity debates” and originating and leading a partnership with InternetNZ to fund the position of a Fellow to research cyber law at Victoria.

Judicial appointments

In March 2008 Peter was appointed Vice-Chair of the NZ Electricity Rulings Panel by the Governor-General of New Zealand, on advice from the Minister of Energy and Resources. The Rulings Panel is a quasi-judicial body set up under the Electricity Governance Regulations 2003 dealing with disputes between electricity wholesalers and retailers under New Zealand’s Code. Peter became Chairman in 2011 and is currently appointed until 2018.

In 2010 Peter was apppointed by the New Zealand Minister of Justice to a 5-year term as a member of the Copyright Tribunal. This body deals with copyright infringement on the Internet through peer-to-peer file sharing. In 2014 he was appointed Vice-Chairman and is currently appointed until 2020.

Background

Peter joined New Zealand national patent attorney firm Baldwin Son & Carey (now Baldwins) in 1980, joining the partnership in 1985. He practiced in the trademark department for four years, then the patent department, serving as head of the patent department from 1987 to March 1994. He was leader of the bio-practice group.

In 1986 he founded the in-house law firm at Baldwin Son & Carey, focusing on litigation, and was the senior litigation partner.

He pioneered the introduction of modern management practices in the firm and was responsible for the design and implementation of its state-of-the-art technology platform.

He was a founding editor of Baldwin’s Newsletter, and was a regular speaker at home and abroad on intellectual property topics.

Peter founded and headed the first bio-practice group at Baldwin’s, responsible for the drafting, prosecution and exploitation of patents relating to bio-technological inventions. He regularly attended the conferences of the Association of Biotechnology Companies, speaking to its Annual Meeting in San Diego, in 1992, and joining the Patent Committee of the organisation. The Patent Committee was consulted by the US National Institute of Health, and Dr. Craig Venter on his patents on expression sequence tags, arising from the Human Genome Project, which provoked international debate.

Peter was commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal (a New Zealand government judicial body, formed to review historic grievances by the Maori -New Zealand’s indigenous people) to write a report on New Zealand’s laws affecting indigenous plants and animals, including claims to intellectual property rights to them, which was published in May 1995.

He assisted the New Zealand Royal Commission into Genetic Modification with intellectual property aspects of its Report. He is cited in the 1995 Guide to the World’s Leading Patent Law Experts.

He moved to the independent bar in 1995.