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Wai Choy

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Wai Choy has deep expertise in technology, media and intellectual property-related transactions and counseling and is a partner in Proskauer’s Corporate Department, Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Group, and Blockchain & Digital Assets Group. He is recognized as a trusted advisor to asset managers, operating companies and other enterprises at various stages in their development and across industries, including technology, technology-enabled services, media, financial services, e-commerce, sports and healthcare.

In the context of private equity, mergers, acquisitions and financings, Wai:

  • Structures and negotiates key transaction documents, such as purchase, merger, transition services and intellectual property license agreements;
  • Leads teams in conducting legal due diligence and provides industry-specific market insights;
  • Advises clients on technology, intellectual property, privacy and data security matters; and
  • Represents portfolio companies pre-sale or post-acquisition in their business operations, including key commercial transactions and strategic agreements.

Wai also helps operating companies navigate legal and business matters in their day-to-day business operations and leads the structuring, drafting and negotiation of a wide range of contracts, such as:

  • Service agreements for a variety of services, including outsourcing, software as a service (SaaS) and other hosted services, data analytics, digital marketing, software and website development, systems integration, technology implementation and payment processing;
  • Collaboration agreements between strategic partners for the development, manufacturing and commercialization of new technology, products and services;
  • Software license agreements and other complex intellectual property license and assignment agreements;
  • Revenue sharing, joint venture, reseller, supply, equipment purchasing, manufacturing and other types of general commercial agreements;
  • Content production, license and distribution agreements covering various business models and distribution methods;
  • In the biotech, pharma and medical device arena, agreements covering research and development collaborations, intellectual property licenses, manufacturing, supply and distribution services, sponsored research, grants, revenue sharing and other strategic partnerships among commercial entities, academic institutions and/or charitable organizations;
  • Terms of use, privacy policies and end user license agreements for websites, mobile apps and other software; and
  • Advertising-related agreements spanning digital, radio and billboard media, including programmatic advertising platform agreements, lead generation service agreements, advertising reseller and affiliate agreements, insertion orders and advertising terms and conditions.

Wai serves as Co-Editor of Proskauer’s Blockchain and the Law blog and counsels business and legal teams on blockchain and distributed ledger technology development, structuring and implementation, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fan tokens and other digital assets, and associated legal issues.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Wai worked in the Business & Legal Affairs departments of Marvel Studios in Los Angeles and Marvel Entertainment in New York. At the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Wai served as Senior Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and was a Levy Scholar.

Contact:Read more about Wai Choy

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were already exploring the promise of blockchain to modernize certain aspects of their supply chains.  Traditional supply chains can be inefficient, data intensive and costly, often characterized by burdensome paperwork, conflicting records and delays resulting from manual reconciliation processes involving a series of transactions and document exchanges among multiple parties.  Blockchain offers potentially substantial benefits in this context, including the secure and auditable validation of transactions, automated documentation to support legal and customs compliance, improved quality control, enhanced end-to-end transparency (e.g., for verifying sustainability or ethical sourcing standards), and overall improvements in efficiency and cost-control.

Indeed, ever since news reports in 2018-19 that Walmart had successfully tested a blockchain platform for food traceability and accountability to track mangoes and other products through the supply chain, entities have been looking in earnest at, and investing in, blockchain solutions targeting the supply chain. Indeed, Walmart has continued to invest and conduct trials of blockchain solutions, having recently announced in August the promising results of Walmart Canada’s use of blockchain technology to reduce inefficiencies and invoice disputes for freight and trucking payments. Blockchain applications in the supply chain to date have largely been in the testing or pilot phase, however, due to the complex array of necessary considerations.

As a preliminary step, companies seeking to leverage blockchain solutions need to assess blockchain’s potential applications and advantages, the practical aspects of transitioning away from legacy systems, and the legal and operational issues associated with the use of blockchains. Before going live, participants in a private blockchain must first understand and be satisfied with how the blockchain will be implemented and administered, including, for example, which parties will be responsible for maintaining the blockchain, which data will be stored “on-chain” or “off-chain” to achieve the desired functionality without compromising the confidentiality of certain proprietary data, and how cybersecurity and data origin integrity issues will be handled. In many situations, an overarching written legal agreement among the various participants is necessary to ensure clear and robust governance and to address key legal issues. Also, testing a blockchain solution in the supply chain context is necessarily a collaborative affair (e.g., it may involve assembling a consortium) because a working platform that delivers business value in a supply chain will require participation by the various players in the ecosystem. This can raise antitrust compliance considerations, requiring careful structuring.  Thus, while there was optimism in using blockchain to bring the supply chain into a new digital age before the pandemic, many organizations felt that implementation could wait.  However, the COVID-19 outbreak has spurred changes in that mindset.

The combination of smart contracts with blockchain technology has created new opportunities to conduct business, realize efficiencies and establish legally enforceable digital contracts. In this two-part video series, Proskauer’s Jeffrey Neuburger and Wai Choy share:

  • Part 1 (Smart Contracts: Benefits & Legal Enforceability): An overview of smart contracts and their

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Once purely theoretical, “majority” or “51%” attacks on public blockchains have dealt participants a reality check: The fundamental assumption of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper (that computing power will remain sufficiently decentralized in blockchain networks that rely on a “proof-of-work” consensus mechanism) can in practice actually be exploited to enable double spending.

“The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes…. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes.” – Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

These incidents have provided opportunities for developers of both public and private blockchains, as well as operators of blockchain-based digital asset trading platforms, to learn from the first generation of blockchain deployments.

Proskauer authored an in-depth Practice Note published by Practical Law, which details best practices for the use of smart contracts on blockchains. It discusses functional and legal considerations for both standalone smart contracts and smart contracts used in conjunction with traditional written contracts (hybrid smart contracts) and explores the…

We are happy to report that our recent in-depth Practice Note on Blockchain as applied to Supply Chain Management was selected to appear as the cover story for the June/July issue of Practical Law – The Journal. Read the full text here.

The plot has thickened in the longest-running “whodunit” in the blockchain space: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin and author of the white paper that started it all, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System? Published in 2008, Nakamoto’s paper proposed a form of electronic cash that would operate purely peer-to-peer, without the need for a trusted intermediary (such as a centralized financial institution) and in a verifiable manner that protects against the “double-spend” problem. That white paper served as the launch pad for the Bitcoin network and inspired blockchain’s proliferation. Over a decade later, the true identity of Nakamoto and whether Nakamoto is a single person or a collective remain a mystery, despite speculation and multiple claims to the digital throne.

Recently, claimants turned to intellectual property registrations in their campaigns for recognition. In April 2019, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright (who has long claimed to be Nakamoto) sparked controversy in the blockchain community by filing two copyright registrations claiming authorship of Nakamoto’s white paper (Reg. No. TXu002136996) and the original Bitcoin source code (Reg. No. TX0008708058). In the wake of Wright’s claims, on May 24, 2019, Wei Liu, reportedly a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and a Chinese citizen with an address in California, upped the ante by also filing a copyright registration (Reg. No. TX0008726120) asserting that he had in fact authored the white paper.

The gauntlet, it seemed, had been thrown down.

Proskauer authored a Practice Note published by Practical Law, which provides an overview of the use of blockchain and smart contracts in the supply chain context, including the legal issues, concerns, benefits and risks associated with its use. It includes, among other topics, information on key distinctions between public…