Inventor Leverages Litigation Funding to Beat Microsoft

A unanimous Court of Appeal has delivered Britain’s litigation-funding industry its most decisive post-PACCAR victory to date, green-lighting the revised financing agreements that underpin multibillion-pound collective actions against Apple, Sony, Visa and Mastercard.

Legal Futures reports that the court rejected arguments claiming a damages cap turns a multiple-based LFA into an illegal damages-based agreement. Writing for the court, Chancellor Sir Julian Flaux held that such caps merely shield class members from excessive returns and do not offend section 58AA of the Courts and Legal Services Act. The judgment restores commercial certainty after the Supreme Court’s 2023 PACCAR decision invalidated percentage-based LFAs and froze dozens of collective actions. Four Competition Appeal Tribunal claims—covering interchange-fee suits and consumer-electronics overcharge allegations—had been stayed pending clarity; they are now expected to restart swiftly.

Practically, the ruling affirms the post-PACCAR template most funders adopted: a defined-multiple return with a protective ceiling expressed as a share of recoveries. Claimant firms may revisit stalled cases once deemed unfundable, while policymakers can pause calls for emergency legislation.

Canadian miner Lupaka Gold has landed the sort of out-of-the-blue windfall that keeps arbitration funders in business. An ICSID tribunal has ordered the Republic of Peru to pay the TSX-V-listed junior roughly $65 million—the full compensation Lupaka sought over the 2018 shuttering of its Invicta gold project, plus costs and compound interest dating back nearly six years.

A press release in GlobeNewswire states that Lupaka will not be the first to collect the proceeds. Under its non-recourse financing agreement, the initial distributions flow to Bench Walk Advisors, the New York- and London-based funder that bankrolled the treaty claim and fronted more than US $4 million in arbitration costs. Only after Bench Walk is made whole—and receives its agreed return—will the miner’s shareholders see any cash.

The award exemplifies how litigation finance is reshaping investor-state disputes. Bench Walk assumed the risk that Peru might prevail or drag the process out indefinitely; in exchange it now stands to crystalise a sizeable, near-term return once enforcement begins. Lupaka’s management, for its part, concedes that “a few more hoops” remain before Peru’s treasury wires the money, but the tribunal’s merits ruling removes the biggest hurdle.

The case reinforces third-party funding’s strategic utility for smaller resource companies facing sovereign interference—especially in Latin America’s mining belt, where political risk remains acute. Funders will parse the award’s interest mechanics as a template for quantifying damages over protracted timelines. More broadly, the result helps validate Bench Walk’s aggressive expansion into treaty arbitration and may spur peers to chase similar high-beta opportunities, even as governments and the UN-backed ICSID reform process debate tighter disclosure around funding arrangements.