The following article was contributed by Dr. Avv. Gian Marco Solas[1], founder of Sustainab-Law and author of Third Party Funding, New Technologies and the Interdisciplinary Methodology as Global Competition Litigation Driving Forces (Global Competition Litigation Review, 1/25).  Dr. Solas is also the author of Third Party Funding, Law Economics an Policy (Cambridge Press).

There is an inaccurate and counterproductive belief in the litigation funding market, that the asset class would be uncorrelated from the global economy. That was in fact due to a much bigger scientific legal problem, that the law itself was not considered as physical factor of correlation, as instrument to measure and determine cause and effects of economic events in legal systems.

This problem has been solved, in both theoretical and mathematical terms, and in fact – thanks to technology available to date such as AI and blockchain – it looks much better for litig … ehm … legal third-party funders. 

Third Party Funding 3.0© opens three new lines of opportunities:

1. AI allows to detect and file claims that would otherwise not have been viable / brought forward, such as unlocked competition law claims[2], which represent the largest chunk of the market for competition claims. See funding proposal.
2. Human law as factor of correlation allows to calculate the unexpressed value of the global economy. Everything that, in fact, can be unlocked with litigation, allowing then a public-private IPO type of process to optimize legal systems[3].
3. Physical modeling of the law also allows to transform debt / liabilities into new investments, thus allowing to settle litigation earlier and with less legal costs, leaving more room to creativity to optimize the investments[4].

While it may be true that the outcome of one single judgement does not depend on the fluctuations of the financial economy, legal reality certainly determines the ups and downs of the litigation funding (and any other) market. Otherwise, we could not explain the rise of litigation funding in the post-financial crisis for instance, or the shockwaves propagated by judgements like PACCAR.

The flip side is that understanding and measuring legal reality, as well as leveraging on modern technologies and innovative legal instruments, the market for legal claims and legal assets is much bigger and sizeable than with the standard litigation financial model.

In order to test Litigation Funding 3.0, I am presenting the following proposal:

10 MILLION EUR in the form of a series A venture capital type of investment to cover one test case's litigation costs, tech, book-building and expert costs aimed at targeting three already identified global or multi-jurisdictional mass anticompetitive claims in the scale of multi-billion dollars, whose details will be provided upon request.

Funder(s) get:

• Percentage of claims' return as per agreement with parties involved;
• Property of the AI / blockchain algorithm;
• License of TPF 3.0.

The funding does not cover: additional legal / litigation / expert / etc. costs.

Below is the full proposal:

Below is the abstract and table of contents from my research:

Abstract

This article aims at fostering competition litigation and market analysis by integrating concepts borrowed from physics science from an historical legal and evolutionary perspective, taking the third party funding (TPF) market as benchmark. To do so, it first combines historical legal data and trends related to the legal and litigation markets, discussing three macro historical trends or “states”: Industrial revolution(s) and globalisation; enlargement of the legal world; digital revolution and liberalisation of the legal profession. It then proposes the multidisciplinary methodology to assess the market for TPF: mainstream economic models, historical “cyclical” data and concepts borrowed from physics, particularly from mechanics of fluids and thermodynamics. On this basis, it discusses the potential implication of such methodology on the global competition litigation practice, for instance in market analysis and damage theory, also by considering the impact of modern technologies. The article concludes that physics models and the interdisciplinary methodology seem to add value to market assessment and considers whether there should be a case for a wider adoption in (competition) litigation and asset management practices.  

Table of Contents

Introduction. I. Evolution of the legal services, litigation and third party funding market(s) 1.1. Industrial revolution(s) and globalisation 1.2. Enlargement of the legal world and privatisation of justice 1.3. Digital revolution and liberalisation of the legal profession II. Modelling the market(s) with economics, historical and physics models. Third Party Funding as benchmark 2.1. Economic models for legal services, legal claims and third party funding markets 2.2. Does history repeat itself? Litigation finance cycles 2.3. Mechanics of fluids and thermodynamics to model legal markets? III. Impact on global competition litigation 3.1. Market analysis and damage theory 3.2. Economics of competition litigation and new technologies. Conclusions. Third Party Funding 3.0© and competitiveness.

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1. Italian / EU qualified lawyer and legal scientist. Leading Expert at BRICS Competition Law & Policy Centre (Higher School of Economics, Moscow). Ph.D.² (Maastricht Law School, Economic Analysis of Law; University of Cagliari, Comparative Law) – LL.M. (College of Europe, EU competition Law). Visiting Fellow at Fordham Law School (US Antitrust), NYU (US Legal finance and civil procedure).

2. G. M. Solas, ‘Third Party Funding, new technologies and the interdisciplinary methodology as global competition litigation driving forces’ (2025) Global Competition Litigation Review, 1.

3. G. M. Solas, ‘Interrelation of Human Laws and Laws of Nature? Codification of Sustainable Legal Systems’ (2025) Journal of Law, Market & Innovation, 2.

4. ‘Law is Love’, at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5694423, par. 3.3.

Ian Garrard is the managing director of Innsworth Advisors Limited, the advisor and manager to the funds that provide third party litigation funding for high value claims in the UK, EU and US.

Claims under management include high profile and groundbreaking claims in the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal against Meta and Amazon, claims in the Netherlands against Oracle and Salesforce, as well as claims against VW in Germany and Apple in the US.  Before moving into litigation funding, Ian was a lawyer in private practice (on financing, restructuring and litigation matters) as well as a founder of specialist law firms and an advisor to major oil & gas interests on exploration and production assets.

The claim against Rightmove alleges that the portal charged estate-agents “excessive and unfair” listing fees, and that the action will proceed on an opt-out basis for thousands of agencies. What specifically attracted Innsworth to fund this case, and how does it fit with your overall litigation-funding strategy? 

Your readers will appreciate that we can’t say too much at this early stage, but on our evaluation it is a strong case on its merits, with a considerable amount of harm caused to the proposed class of businesses. Jeremy Newman, the proposed class representative and a former CMA panel member has an excellent team supporting him, led by lawyers from Scott+Scott UK LLP. Innsworth is a committed funder of opt out collective actions in the Competition Appeal Tribunal and this case fits squarely within our focus. More information on the claim is available at rightmovefeesclaim.com.

More generally, this is an exciting time for us. We are funding three other opt out claims in the CAT and we have just announced a claim on behalf of Uber drivers in the UK and Europe, which alleges that Uber has unlawfully used automated decision-making, including profiling, in its pricing systems to dynamically set driver pay by algorithm and reduce their take-home pay. If the claim doesn’t settle in the pre-action phase then the intention is to issue collective proceedings before the Amsterdam District Court in the Netherlands. We also have lots of promising cases in our pipeline at the moment, working in collaboration with a range of London and EU based law firms.

Opt-out class actions in the UK’s competition-law space have historically faced procedural and payout-challenges. How is the funding arrangement structured in this Rightmove claim to align incentives across Innsworth, the claimants, and their legal counsel? 

There has been much said and written about the challenges the UK’s opt out regime is working through - including the need to balance reasonable certainty as to the level of returns a funder will derive and the desire to ensure that the regime delivers for the benefit of the class. The benefit of any recovery by the class comes at a cost - as in any commercial context – and the CAT to its credit recognises the importance of third party funding to the functioning of the opt-out regime. Recognising this and the interests of the class, the funding is structured in a way that seeks to align those interests.

From a business model perspective, Rightmove commands a dominant share of UK property-portal traffic and listings (reportedly over 80%). How do you assess the strength of the antitrust and competition arguments in the claim, and how does Innsworth evaluate the potential for a precedent-setting outcome if the tribunal rules favourably? 

The Rightmove fees claim announcement follows a series of English unfair pricing judgments which have gone a long way to clarify how an English court or tribunal will approach these kinds of cases. Rightmove uses its high market share as a marketing tool and has achieved sky-high margins over many years, achieved through regularly increasing its prices.  Many agents feel they have no choice but to be on Rightmove and Rightmove knows that. Commentary from industry figures following the announcement of the claim has highlighted how strongly many class members feel about Rightmove’s pricing.

Litigation funding in large scale opt-out claims is increasingly visible to institutional investors. How does Innsworth view its role as a funder in terms of transparency, reputation-risk management, and alignment with claimant-interests?   

We take our role as a stakeholder in the UK (and global) litigation funding community very seriously and we are confident in the value that our funding provides. The service we provide, of non-recourse funding, protects claimants against the costs of litigation.

If our funding unlocks redress for a class, that is a recovery for those harmed that would not otherwise have been achieved, so there is therefore a synergy between the interests of a funder and a class harmed by breach of competition law.  Innsworth is transparent about its funding and terms of funding in the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

We do think there is a debate to be had about whether defendants should have access to financial information on e.g. a claim budget and funder commission. We think it’s fair that a defendant should be satisfied that a litigation funder can meet any adverse costs order made against it in an opt out claim (as England and Wales is a ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction). But currently defendants to these claims will scrutinise claim budgets and funding agreements in detail and use this to make opportunistic arguments, while claimants typically have no visibility on defendant budgets and funding. It’s an example of the information asymmetries which exist when seeking to hold dominant companies to account.

What is your take on the litigation funding market for opt out claims in England and Wales at the moment? 

We’ve seen a real slowdown in the number of claims being filed in the last year or so. A lot of this is due to uncertainty as to the level of return that the Competition Appeal Tribunal will permit a funder to receive, even if this has been freely agreed between a class representative and funder. Of course, the effect of PACCAR has made funding more challenging in England and Wales generally.

That said, Dr Kent’s recent success in her claim against Apple highlights the potential of the regime to hold dominant companies to account and to deliver meaningful redress to class members. The judgment is timely as the UK government is currently considering making reforms to the opt out regime in the face of a concerted lobbying effort from big business groups. We think the opt out regime is starting to deliver on its objective of improving competitiveness in the UK economy, so making any wholesale changes now would be counterproductive, but the prospect of reforms is adding to the uncertainty facing the regime.