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Digital Transformation

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Whilst the EU’s AI Act has been grabbing all the headlines, the draft AI Convention has been flying under the radar. But not for much longer. The Convention, also sometimes called the ‘AI Treaty’, has been drafted by the Council of Europe. If adopted, it will be the first legally binding international convention on AI. The latest draft is not the final version, but contains text that is still subject to negotiation. We’ve set out…

In a significant step towards modernizing the European Union (EU) design protection system, the Council and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on December 5, 2023, to modernize Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs and Directive 98/71/EC on the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 on the legal protection of designs (“EU Design Protection System”). The EU Design Protection System has been in force…

On 9 November 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that an EU Member State may not subject an information society service provider (ISSP) established in another EU Member State to general and abstract regulatory measures that deviate from measures of the Member State in which the ISSP is established (C‑376/22). In doing so, it declared the Austrian Communication Platforms Act and, by implication, many other national online platform regulations, inapplicable…

The Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes wide-ranging and transformative obligations on online intermediaries and platforms. As has been well-publicised over the last few months, the most onerous obligations, and tighter deadlines for compliance, fall on services designated by the Commission as very large online platforms (VLOPs) or very large online search engines (VLOSEs). However, all online platforms and online search engines were required to publish information on their user figures earlier this year, and all…

Last month, the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) launched a consultation package on the first batch of certain draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) and draft implementing technical standards (ITS) on certain aspects of the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, DORA. You can find more detail in our alert here. The draft technical standards cover: the risk management framework that financial institutions (FIs) are required to introduce classification of ICT related incidents, and the test for classifying…

While the legal industry has been a slow adopter of digital technologies, and traditional corners of the industry fiercely resist transformation, there is no doubt that there is a wealth of opportunity for the sector. For a minidocumentary on the subject, Digital Nation Australia spoke to Hilary Goodier, partner at Ashurst and co-head of the newlaw division, Ashurst Advance, Ben Allgrove, partner and chief innovation officer at Baker McKenzie, Erin Kanygin, co founder of legal…

Blockchain was originally created to validate the transactions of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It can be described as a digital ledger of transactions that is an immutable database and distributed across a network of computer systems. Although touted primarily as a value transfer technology, at its core, blockchain is also a records and data management technology.1 Blockchain technology provides a system for recording information in a manner that makes it difficult to change, hack, or…

The need for businesses to be agile, innovative, and data-savvy to compete and thrive in the dynamic economic landscape is very clear. Digital transformation ranks high on corporate agendas but so do concerns around privacy, security and integration with legacy IT systems. In its seventh year, Baker McKenzie’s Digital Transformation & Cloud Survey captures major trends and attitudes through a global lens. Explore the issues from all angles across legal, technology, and procurement roles, and from…

Introduction Digital transformation has gained traction in recent years and affects employment relationships more than ever. The emergence of the so-called platform economy is certainly the epitome of this development. However, new technologies and methods of collaboration also need to comply with legal requirements. At the end of 2020, the Federal Labour Court (FLC) likely turned the platform business model upside down, when the judges decided that a crowdworker using a platform’s app on a…