This piece looks ahead to what we might expect as IT law developments in 2018. Unusually as we go into a new year, the main headlines of what IT lawyers can expect in 2018 are signposted at the outset: new financial services laws in January, the GDPR in May and looking ahead to Brexit in […] MORE

Microsoft’s announcement that it has extended its Azure IP Advantage (AIPA) programme to China from 1 October 2017 neatly illustrates a number of key contracting trends helping to shape the development of the global, hyperscale Cloud. In the physical world, we take it for granted that our home and where we work will not be […] MORE

You can see what’s on the minds of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) from the way they’re evolving their customer agreements. In recent blog posts we’ve shown how CSPs are addressing the growing risks to service availability from patent claims and in particular how Amazon Web Services (AWS) had included in their Customer Agreement an unusual […] MORE

‘It’s only AI until you know what it does, then it’s just software’ is a good way of making artificial intelligence accessible.  Fuelled by exploding volumes of big data – digital data is growing at a compound rate of 60% per year – AI can be seen as the convergence of machine processing, learning, perception […] MORE

The interconnected world of the 4th industrial revolution is driven by software. As software functionality continues to expand through developments in algorithms, AI, APIs, business process automation and smart contracts, software systems increasingly interact more widely and with more and more other systems. It is not surprising therefore that issues around software over-deployment – where […] MORE

This blog develops the themes of our February piece on cloud availability risks from software patent claims. It shows how the patent cloudscape is changing; how PAEs are increasingly active in Europe as well as in the USA; and how CSPs are starting to respond in their contract terms. With increasingly recognised benefits of security, […] MORE

Richard Kemp recently contributed a video to Practical Law which outlines the legal issues that businesses involved in the Internet of Things need to be aware of. Topics include: The Internet of Things (IoT) explained Why the IoT is so significant The Fourth Industrial Revolution Key legal issues related to the IoT Key privacy and […] MORE

“You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.” (Adama, Battlestar Galactica) AI and Robotics are not new. For many years, centuries even, humanity has been fascinated with the concept of non-human intelligence. […] MORE

The interconnected world of the 4th industrial revolution is driven by software. As software functionality continues to expand through developments in algorithms, AI, APIs, business process automation and smart contracts, software systems increasingly interact more widely and with more and more other systems. It is not surprising therefore that issues around software over-deployment – where […] MORE

As the public cloud services market continues to mature and grow – up from $178bn in 2015 to $209bn in 2016 according to research company Gartner[1] – the concentration of computing resources into cloud data centres is increasingly attracting the attention of NPEs as a target for patent litigation. At a time when data security […] MORE