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New Year’s Resolutions For Procuring Technology Solutions in 2025
Jagvinder Singh Kang provides some timely advice for your procurement projects this year. IntroductionTechnology procurement has evolved over the decades. Gone are the days of just procuring IT hardware alone, or standard software. Organisations have become more dependent upon Cloud solutions, usually in the form of SaaS, and now there will be an inevitable movement…
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AI Christmas Carol 2.0
(with apologies to Charles Dickens) Sarah Harris, Henry Goodwin and Ashley Winton update the perennial themes of Scrooge to a 21st century setting where Scrooge is struggling to stay relevant….. Published shortly before Christmas in 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was an instant hit in 19th century Britain, telling the salutary tale of Ebenezer…
Technology and Security for Lawyers and Other Professionals
The Basics and Beyond Rónán Kennedy reviews a book aimed directly at the legal professional who needs to understand the technology they advise on. Those who work in law and technology are sure to encounter some aspect of hardware or software that they do not understand, either because it is new or because they simply…
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Software Escrow – Its Evolution, Use in Legal Frameworks and The Influence of AI
Mark Ryan and Tom Sweet of SES Secure trace the evolution of software escrow and the impact of AI on its use As many readers will know, software escrow is a risk mitigation tool that safeguards the critical assets, such as software applications, organisations are reliant on. It typically involves a tri-party legal agreement being…
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How Software is Designed and Built
William Hooper looks at how software design can influence the success of a project. William Heath Robinson had a delightful eye for the absurd. His designs were elaborate and amusingly flawed. How is software designed and built, and what is the effect of this on value to a customer? Does it matter if the design…
Latest News
View more news >General Court orders Commission to pay damages to website visitor due to transfer of personal data to the US
In Bindl v Commission, an individual in Germany complained that the Commission had infringed his right to the protection of his personal data when, in 2021 and 2022, he visited a Commission website and registered using the Commission’s EU Login authentication service, having selected the option of signing in using his Facebook account. The individual…
ICO updates guidance on the use of storage and access technologies
The ICO has issued updated guidance about the use of storage and access technologies with the primary aim of giving regulatory certainty to organisations. It explains how the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (as amended) (PECR) and where relevant, data protection law apply when organisations use technologies that store information, or access information stored,…
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This Week’s Techlaw News Round-up
UK law CMA enters into Memorandum of Understanding with Ofcom in relation to Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 The CMA has published a Memorandum of Understanding that it has entered into with Ofcom in relation to the digital markets competition regime in Part 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024….
CMA sets out initial plans as new digital markets competition regime comes into force
The Competition and Markets Authority has set out its initial plans for the new digital markets competition regime. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act received Royal Assent in May 2024 and the new digital markets competition regime came into force on 1 January 2025. The CMA issued guidance about its substantive and procedural approach…
UK government cracks down on explicit deepfakes
The UK government has announced that it intends to crack down on explicit deepfakes. It will introduce new offences covering both creating and sharing deepfake images. This reflects the government’s manifesto commitment to ban the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes as well as recommendations from the Law Commission relating to intimate images. The government will…
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Latest Cases
View more cases >General Court orders Commission to pay damages to website visitor due to transfer of personal data to the US
In Bindl v Commission, an individual in Germany complained that the Commission had infringed his right to the protection of his personal data when, in 2021 and 2022, he visited a Commission website and registered using the Commission’s EU Login authentication service, having selected the option of signing in using his Facebook account. The individual…
High Court considers cryptocurrency status in English law and key aspects of cryptocurrency fraud claims
For the first time following a full trial, the English High Court in D’Aloia v Persons Unknown, Bitkub and others [2024] EWHC 2342 (Ch) has confirmed that cryptocurrency, specifically USD Tether (USDT), can be traced and can constitute property under English law. The court also made observations as to key legal and evidential links needed…
Court of Justice rules in another case brought by Max Schrems
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled in Case C-446/21 | Schrems. It said that an online social network such as Facebook cannot use all the personal data obtained for targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data. In 2018, Meta Platforms Ireland started using…
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CJEU considers police access to data in a mobile telephone
The CJEU has issued its ruling in Case C-548/21 | Bezirkshauptmannschaft Landeck. The Austrian police seized the mobile telephone of the recipient of a parcel following the discovery that the parcel contained 85 grams of cannabis. The police then tried unsuccessfully to unlock the mobile telephone to access the data it contained. The police were…
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Online accommodation reservation platforms
The Court of Justice has ruled in Case C-264/23 | Booking.com and Booking.com (Deutschland) that price parity clauses cannot, in principle, be classified as “ancillary restraints” under EU competition law. Booking.com is incorporated under Netherlands law with its registered office in Amsterdam. It offers a worldwide online intermediation service to reserve accommodation. Hotels pay commission…
Latest Event Reports
View more event reports >The SCL AI Conference: Key Takeaways
Mauricio Figueroa summarises the key points from the SCL AI Conference hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills on 8th October. Practitioners, lawmakers, academics, trainees, in-house lawyers, and civil society representatives gathered at Herbert Smith Freehills’ offices in London for the annual Society for Computers and Law AI conference. The event brought together experts to explore the…
SCL 50th Anniversary Conference 2023 – Rising Star Impression
Victor Gurr, Trainee Solicitor, Gisby Harrison Solicitors was nominated to attend the recent SCL 50th Anniversary Conference on 10 October 2023 as a tech law “rising star”. “Rising stars” are invited to record their impressions of the Conference in any form they choose (in previous years these have been event reports, infographs and even poems!). These…
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SCL 50th Anniversary Conference Event Report: “The Dragon Under the Sofa and other stories”
What separates humanity from technology? The sudden omniscience of ChatGPT in November 2022 has prompted a good deal of philosophising on that question with the apparent gap between the human and the machine growing ever less defined. There is as yet little common ground on where the boundary lies but one oft cited difference is…
The SCL 50th Anniversary Conference – a visual overview
Gerald Brent, Associate, Addleshaw Goddard, provides a visual summary of some of the key elements from the recent SCL 50th Anniversary Conference….
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Key Takeaways from the SCL Privacy and DP Group Event: Ad Tech – Bring Everyone to the Table
Speakers Anita Bapat (Kemp Little LLP) Tom O’Flynn (Google) James Evan (Verizon media) Alex Abrahams (DMGT) Karishma Brahmbhatt (Allen & Overy LLP) Event Overview With ad-tech a key focus for data protection authorities such as the ICO and CNIL, panellists James, Alex and Tom methodically described ad-tech infrastructure, and the various players involved within the…
