Secretaries of State reply to Select Committees’ joint response to copyright and AI consultation

The Secretaries of State for Science, Innovation and Technology and for Culture, Media and Sport have replied to the February 2025 CMS and SIT Committees’ joint response to the government’s consultation on AI and copyright. They have shared the Committees’ joint response with officials at the Intellectual property Office to ask them to consider the Committee’s comments.  They also said that there have been over 11,500 responses to the consultation.  The government is carefully reviewing responses and has not made any decisions yet. The implementation of any text and data mining exception depends on having workable technical solutions in place for rights reservation. The government will not proceed with legislation unless and until these technical requirements are met.

Ofcom sets out 2025/26 Plan of Work and longer-term blueprint to support economic growth

Ofcom has issued its Plan of Work for 2025/26 which outlines its strategic priorities aimed at enhancing communication services, ensuring online safety, and promoting competition in the media and telecommunications sectors across the UK. The plan focuses on four main priorities: ‘Internet and post we can rely on’, ‘Media we trust and value’, ‘We live a safer life online’, and ‘Enabling wireless in the UK economy’. Key initiatives include supporting investment in gigabit-capable broadband, improving telecoms network security, reforming the universal postal service, implementing the Media Act, enforcing content standards, establishing the Online Safety regime, managing radio spectrum efficiently, and facilitating innovation in mobile and satellite services. Ofcom also says that it will address the unique needs of each home nation, ensuring tailored approaches and stakeholder engagement. The plan emphasizes collaboration with domestic and international partners, investing in data and technology capabilities, and using evidence-based regulation to inform policy decisions.

Adult sites start rolling out age assurance

Ofcom has indicated that providers of online pornography are implementing highly effective age assurance across thousands of sites, in response to Ofcom’s enforcement programme in this area. Earlier this year, Ofcom wrote to hundreds of providers, collectively covering thousands of sites that publish their own pornographic content, telling them about their new obligations under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act to implement highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing this material. So far, it says that it has had positive engagement from across the sector and several providers have implemented highly effective age assurance in response to its enforcement programme. It is currently reviewing compliance plans and implementation timescales for other services in scope of these duties. It is also assessing the age assurance measures of providers who have not responded, and several services have been referred to Ofcom’s enforcement team, who will consider in the coming weeks whether formal enforcement action is appropriate. Details of any new investigations will be published on the Ofcom website. By July 2025, all services that allow pornography, including sites that allow user-generated pornographic content, will need to have highly effective age-checks in place to protect children from accessing it.

Patents Court considers patent validity and infringement and FRAND terms claims validly served out of jurisdiction

In Mediatek Inc and others v Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and another [2025] EWHC 649 (Pat), the Patents Court decided that the court had validly permitted service on a defendant out of the jurisdiction regarding actions concerning validity and infringement of telecommunications patents, and the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms for a global cross-licence. Huawei wanted to license its SEPs at the chipset rather than device level. MediaTek brought proceedings against Huawei in the Patents Court, and among other things wanted determination of a global FRAND licence. Huawei pointed to fact that the relevant acts took place around China as well as the existence of parallel proceedings brought by Huawei and MediaTek in China.

The post This Week’s Techlaw News Round-Up appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

How does Japan’s technological landscape influence its legal frameworks, and how do those frameworks differ from or align with Western counterparts?

In this episode, host Mauricio Figueroa is joined by two leading legal experts from Japan, Kaori Ishii and Hajime Idei, to explore this complex and often overlooked jurisdiction in the global conversation on tech law. Tune in for an interesting conversation on the intersection of culture, technology, and law in one of the world’s most innovative nations. Listen to the episode here https://bit.ly/3XHA9kf

The Panel:

Mauricio Figueroa is a Mexican legal scholar based in the United Kingdom. His area of expertise is Law and Digital Technologies, and has international experience in legal research, teaching, and public policy. He is the host of the SCL podcast “Privacy and Technology Laws Around the World”.

Kaiori Ishii is a Professor in Chuo University, Faculty of Global Informatics from April 2019.
Before joining Chuo University, her professional experience included roles as a lawyer, in-house counsel, and academic positions at the Institute of Information Security and the University of Tsukuba.
Her research focuses on legal issues related to data protection and privacy across different countries. Her work includes comparative analyses of data protection legislation, exploring insights into the right to privacy, and examining how to harmonize current technological advancements with privacy protections. Recently, she has been interested in the intersection of privacy and data protection with competition law and consumer protection law.
She has been involved in various expert committees under the Cabinet Secretariat, ministries, and local governments in Japan, where she has provided input based on her expertise.

Haime Idei is Japanese lawyer, graduated from Waseda University School of Law. After working at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, he joined Kotto Dori Law Office (https://www.kottolaw.com/en/). His specialty is entertainment law. He mainly advises the anime, game, AI, and VR industries.
From 2020 to 2023, he was involved in Japan’s Intellectual Property policy as an assistant counsellor at the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters of the Cabinet Office.
Since 2022, he has also served as an auditor of the Japanese Animation Society, researching development of Japanese anime culture.
His publications include “The Current State of the Debate on the Copyrightability of AI Creations and Future Legal Practice” (July 2024).

About the podcast

Join host Mauricio Figueroa and guests on a tour of tech law from across the globe. Previous episodes have focused on the use of ‘robot judges’ in several jurisdictions and developments in India and the USA. Future episodes will look at South America, Africa and Europe.

Where to listen

• podcasts.scl.org
• Spotify
• Apple
• Amazon

The post SCL Podcast “Technology & Privacy Laws Around The World” – Episode 4: Japan appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

Introducing Disruption
Imagine someone, sitting anxiously in a waiting room at a solicitor’s office they hastily found online. They clutch a notice of eviction in their hands, confused as to how their landlord can remove them from their home of ten years. Somewhere else, a woman waits on hold with a personal injury helpline after months of excruciating pain from slipping on an uneven paving stone, leaving her unable to work. Another man is on their commute home from work for the last time, frantically googling employment law, after being unexpectedly dismissed; he does not know what he can do or where next month’s rent will come from. Despite their differences, they all share one common question:

“Am I going to win?”

It is an age-old query coming in different forms; can I stay in my home; how much will I get in damages? Ultimately, they want to know about the outcome.

When considering how AI can increase access to justice, we must start there—with the outcome. Too often, solutions to the crisis of access to justice are framed within the constraints of existing systems, which rely on the current process being supported by technology (sustaining technologies). While these efforts are valuable, artificial intelligence (“AI”) offers an opportunity to work outside of these constraints and construct new routes to the same just outcomes (disruptive technologies).¹ This account will consider how access to justice has already benefitted from AI and what could be done next.

Organising Disruption: Efficiency
For AI-driven disruption to meaningfully increase access to justice, its implementation must be guided by clear principles with efficiency as the cornerstone. In this context, efficiency encompasses both expediency and accuracy in results. Timely justice has been a consistent guiding ethos, with the Magna Carta stating, “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”² This remains pertinent today, as explained by Zuckerman, the passage of time can diminish the value and enforceability of rights, making speed an essential element not just in procedure but in the dispensing of justice.³
Guided by efficiency and a willingness to move beyond traditional processes, AI can increase access to justice by providing faster, and still accurate, resolution that would otherwise take months of litigation.

Implementing Disruption
One clear example of AI systems enhancing access to justice is the rise of chatbots, such as AccessAva, which streamline legal information for those who need it most.⁴ AccessAva, developed by Carers UK in partnership with Access Social Care, is an online tool designed specifically for unpaid carers in the UK. It empowers users by providing easy-to-understand legal information, along with templates and resources which reduce the need for professional legal assistance. Other models include DoNotPay, which offers a similar service aimed at consumers. These chatbots are examples of Large Language Models (“LLM”), which are trained on large amounts of text data, which, in turn, generate natural language responses to a wide range of inputs.⁵ What sets models like DoNotPay and AccessAva apart is their focus on supporting litigants directly. They disrupt by allowing computers to speak the language of lawyers, which was previously unachievable. Further, they increase efficiency by centralising the information needed by the individual and making justice more accessible to those who might otherwise struggle with traditional systems due to financial constraints or a lack of understanding. This exemplifies AI as a solution to problems highlighted by the 2023 Legal Needs Survey by the Law Society. A key finding was that, of people who faced a legal issue between 2019 and 2023, only 52% received professional help, with the rest either relying on family and friends or not seeking assistance at all.⁶ The survey highlights two key barriers: the cost of legal advice and a lack of understanding or confidence in engaging with the law. AI-driven platforms like AccessAva are precisely the kind of innovation that can overcome these obstacles, closing the gap and providing essential support to those who would otherwise struggle to access justice.

They can also be taken further. AI systems, particularly those using machine learning, can analyse patterns in large datasets to predict outcomes which has the potential to take chatbots beyond the provision of legal information and into the realm of advice.⁷ For instance, researchers have used AI to predict the outcomes of European Court of Human Rights cases with 79% accuracy.⁸ A predictive capability like this has the potential to disrupt as it would allow an individual not only to understand what the next steps are but to make a well-informed decision on whether to pursue at all. Users could ask whether they have a strong case, whether pursuing it is cost-effective, or what outcomes they might expect. Accessing legal advice is a key element of access to justice and an AI system which combines predictive outputs with user-friendly interfaces, like AccessAva and DoNotPay, has the potential to increase the number of people that such advice is available to.

Challenges
There are concerns which should be met head-on, the primary one being accuracy. If the architecture which underlies any predictive technology is wrong, the output will be too. Thus, any such model would have to be tightly regulated by humans (lawyers) with the knowledge of the underlying area and the ability to understand the dispute to ensure the algorithm does not result in litigants abandoning worthy claims. Legal minds will have a role at the point of data entry and in auditing the output. The changing role of the lawyer and the need for the legal sector to be reflexive with technological advancements is part of the disruption that access to justice solutions which use AI will bring around. The lawyer’s auditing role is also in identifying “hallucinations” by chatbots whereby responses generated are incorrect or fabricated. The risk is lower with bespoke systems using specialised legal data than with general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT.⁹ Despite the reduced risk, verification by a qualified legal mind is still necessary to ensure accuracy, and therefore efficiency. With this safeguard, chatbots can help democratise legal assistance.
Another significant concern regarding the use of AI in legal practice is that it could stunt the growth of the common law. A classic iteration of this concern comes from considering Donoghue v Stevenson,¹⁰ a seemingly simple case where a woman drank from a bottle which, unbeknownst to her, had a decomposing snail inside. While the case involved a straightforward fact pattern, it went all the way to the House of Lords and ultimately established the “neighbour principle,” a key development in negligence law. If fed into an AI advice system before this principle was established, the outcome might have been different, possibly failing to recognise the broader legal implications of the case. This raises the concern that AI systems, by relying heavily on data from past decisions, might overlook the unique factors in a case that could lead to the establishment of new legal principles. If AI simply provides a binary answer—”good claim, pursue” or “no claim, tough luck” – it could ignore the nuanced, creative reasoning that legal professionals bring to the table. It must be acknowledged that whichever AI system is implemented, it has to be sophisticated enough to recognise and flag unique features of a case that may not align with past precedents. These features could prompt lawyers to consider how the case might develop or whether it warrants a new interpretation of the law.

Conclusion
Embracing AI has the potential to reduce delays and empower individuals with legal information and guidance. This disruption must be managed carefully with human oversight to address challenges in ensuring accuracy and preserving the flexibility of legal interpretation.
This account comes from a legal perspective, without the technical expertise to explore the underlying technology. That knowledge gap should not, however, remove lawyers from the conversation. They bring essential industry insights and knowledge that are key to the reflexive relationship between law and tech.
Ultimately, with such collaboration and safeguards, AI can bridge the justice gap, ensuring that more people can ask and answer the crucial question, “Am I going to win?”

Beth Gilmour is the winner of the SCL AI Group Junior Lawyer Article Competition. Beth is a BAR student and is currently a Judicial Assistant to High Court Judges in England and Wales.

1. Susskind RE, Tomorrow’s Lawyers an Introduction to Your Future, Chapter 6 “Disruptive Legal Technologies” (Third edition, Oxford University Press 2023), ↩︎
2. Magna Carta Clause 40 ↩︎
3. Professor Adrian Zuckerman, Zuckerman on Civil Procedure: Principles of Practice 4th Ed, Chapter 1 p.17 (4th Edition. Street & Maxwell, 2021) ↩︎
4. AccessAva, available at https://www.accesscharity.org.uk/accessava (accessed December 2024) ↩︎
5. Robin Allen KC and Dee Master, Judges, Lawyers, and litigation: Do they, should they, use AI? Paper for the Employment Law Bar Association (2024) p.17 ↩︎
6. The Law Society: Find out what your clients need, with the results of our Legal Needs Survey, available at https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/research/find-out-what-your-clients-need-with-the-results-of-our-legal-needs-survey (accessed December 2024) ↩︎
7. Richard Susskind n1, Table 6.1 ↩︎
8. Nikolaos Aletras, Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis, Daniel Preoţiuc-Pietro, Vasileios Lampos, Predicting judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: a Natural Language Processing perspective, (2016) PeerJ Computer Science 2:e93 ↩︎
9. Robin Allen KC and Dee Master n5, p.13 ↩︎
10. [1932] AC 562 ↩︎

The post The ability of AI to increase access to justice. appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

LawTech Industry in the UK

He said that the LawTech industry is still in its infancy in Europe but has matured in the US. The UK has the potential to be a serious competitor in the global LawTech market, which was approaching $30 billion last year. It has a strong legal infrastructure, including English law, the Commercial Court, the Business and Property Courts, and London arbitration. The UK is home to 350 LawTech corporations, and UK legal services contributed £37 billion to the UK economy last year.

UK Jurisdiction Taskforce

The UKJT has published three Legal Statements to clarify the law and remove legal impediments to the adoption of new technologies.

• In November 2019, the UKJT published a legal statement on the status of cryptoassets and smart contracts under English private law. It was followed by the Law Commission’s report on Digital Assets on 28 June 2023 and now by the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill that is proceeding through the House of Lords.
• In February 2023, the UKJT published a legal statement on the issuance and transfer of digital securities under English private law.
• In April 2024, the UKJT released a legal statement on digital assets and English insolvency law.

The UKJT also published digital dispute resolution rules in 2021, which he said have been widely adopted.

New UKJT projects

Control in relation to third category digital assets

The UKJT is working on non-binding guidance on the legal concept of ‘control’ in relation to third category digital assets. This work is intended to facilitate the development of common law and provide market confidence for the adoption of English law in digital asset transactions.

Liability for harms caused by AI

The UKJT is producing a fourth legal statement on the ability of English law to provide redress for harms caused by AI. This statement will focus on harms caused to third parties and whether the existing law of torts can adequately respond. It is needed due to similar projects in the EU and the US, the calls for AI regulation in the UK, and market uncertainty about legal liability for AI.

International Jurisdiction Taskforce

The UKJT is forming an international taskforce to bring together legal thinkers from main private law jurisdictions to understand common ground in approaches to digital assets and digital trading. The aim is to achieve some level of private law alignment between jurisdictions like New York, English, Singapore, Dubai, French, and German law.

The speech concluded by saying that the legal sector is a unique selling point (USP) for the UK, with a judiciary of undoubted integrity and respected lawyers. AI and digital trading are likely to fundamentally affect the legal sector.

The post Master of the Rolls gives speech on work of the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

The following provisions come into force with effect from 6 April 2025 (to the extent they are already in force:

The consumer law enforcement regimes

Part 3 of the Act introduces two regimes to enforce consumer protection law; a court-based regime, where enforcement authorities apply to court for action to be taken against a trader, and a direct enforcement regime operated by the CMA.

The unfair commercial practices regime

Part 4 of the Act updates and replaces the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.  However, separate regulations are needed to clarify the rights and specify remedies, so the sections relating to rights of redress will not come into force until those regulations have been made.  Until then, consumers will have remedies under the 2008 regulations.

The duty of expedition on the CMA and sectoral regulators

The Act amends the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 to oblige the CMA to exercise its consumer functions as soon as reasonably practicable.

Consumer savings schemes

The consumer savings schemes provisions come into force with effect from 1 January 2026. These establish new rules to protect consumers’ money paid into saving schemes, such as Christmas savings clubs.

The rules on subscription contracts are expected to take effect for contracts entered into from the spring of next year.

Speech on CMA’s enforcement priorities

Sarah Cardell has given a speech to TechUK in which she set out a summary of the CMA’s approach to the new rules coming into force.  Guidance on the unfair commercial practices will be streamlined and will be enforced from April.  However, the guidance on drip pricing will be reworked and there will be another consultation later this year.  Until then, the CMA will only enforce the well understood rules.  It will also delay enforcing the new fake reviews rules for the first six months.  In terms of what it will enforce, it will look at the most egregious breaches. For example, aggressive sales practices that prey on vulnerability; providing information to consumers that is objectively false; and contract terms that are very obviously imbalanced and unfair.

The post Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2025 made appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

The key points raised are set out below.

Open Justice principle

Respondents emphasised the value of the principle that justice must be seen to be done to ensure transparency and hold the judiciary and courts accountable. Respondents noted the importance of the judiciary’s independence but felt there was a lack of public understanding about the role of judges and their independence, with calls for action to increase public awareness. Public understanding of the courts system and how decisions are reached was seen as a key element of the rule of law, to keep the law accessible and maintain confidence in the system. Several respondents felt that consideration needed to be given to the delivery of open justice in a digital age, given the context of more online hearings, digital documents, and (in the civil and family jurisdictions) more settlements outside of courts and before formal court proceedings have begun.

Remote observation and livestreaming

Respondents highlighted various benefits of remote observation and livestreaming, including increasing access to hearings, enabling broader media coverage, and improving public understanding of the justice system. Respondents noted several risks including the risks to privacy and an increased risk of contempt of court, for example, through unauthorised recording of the proceedings. Respondents were also concerned that parties may feel intimidated, and this may affect victims’ and witnesses’ ability to provide evidence or take part in proceedings. It was suggested that these risks could potentially be mitigated through judicial discretion and appropriate safeguards.

Data access and reuse

Respondents felt that justice data should be made more accessible for research and innovation, with appropriate safeguards for personal data. This would allow for better scrutiny of the justice system, support academic legal research, and enable development of tools that could transform the UK legal services and LawTech sectors. Current barriers provided by respondents included unclear processes and routes for request, inconsistencies around the format and structure of data sets, and the time taken to access data.

Broadcasting court proceedings

Respondents felt that broadcasting had the potential to increase public understanding and trust, but identified a number of risks and therefore suggested that any plans to expand broadcasting should be developed with a cautious, iterative approach. Respondents raised concerns around potential privacy breaches and the potential for broadcasting trials to act as a deterrent for witnesses or victims to come forward. The potential for sensationalism and inaccurate reporting from social media users and bloggers who were less familiar with reporting rules was also raised.

Listings

Respondents noted the importance of access to accurate and timely listings, which display information on upcoming court cases, in facilitating open justice. Some respondents reported that, in their experience, listings were not always published in a timely and consistent manner. Opinion on the level of detail that should be included in listings varied. Several secondary uses for listings were suggested including statistical analysis to better understand the types of cases being heard in courts and tools to aid media, NGOs and court watchers in tracking cases from start to finish.

Access to courts and tribunals

Respondents felt more could be done to ensure ‘in-person’ public access to courts and tribunals, such as ensuring courts and tribunals were fit for visitors and observers, and the importance of clear signage and staff support. Wider barriers to access mentioned included inconsistent access to court documents and the lack of contact details for specific courts. Some respondents highlighted the importance of the judiciary’s role in this, for example, by ensuring reporting restrictions were clear, granting access to remote observers where appropriate, and aiming to minimise complex legal language throughout proceedings.

Single Justice Procedure

Respondents raised concerns about the transparency of the Single Justice Procedure, especially for defendants who did not respond to notices of prosecution. Suggestions for improvements included increased guidance and support for defendants. Respondents also felt the Single Justice Procedure needed greater scrutiny, with better data publication around the process and outcomes.

Publication of judgments and sentencing remarks

Respondents were generally positive about centralising the publication of court judgments and tribunal decisions into a single online platform. The importance of making judgments available in machine-readable formats was emphasised. Concerns were expressed with the current limited availability of judgments online which was seen to restrict the public’s ability to understand the reasoning behind specific decisions, potentially impacting public trust and confidence in judicial decision-making overall.

Access to court documents

Respondents reported that the cost of obtaining court documents can act as a deterrent to individuals or organisations seeking access. Respondents offered suggestions for improving the accessibility of documents including setting up a central database, standardising rules and procedures across jurisdictions, and reducing the costs for accessing documents.

Public legal education

Respondents reported a lack of public understanding of the justice system, with various factors contributing to this, including complexities across jurisdictions, the complex language used in legal proceedings, difficulties in accessing affordable legal advice, lack of access to court documents, and the lack of easily accessible public information about the justice system. Respondents suggested various methods to increase knowledge, including government information campaigns, inclusion of justice education in the school curriculum, community outreach and using the media (particularly social media) as a vehicle of communication.

There were various overarching themes:

• The importance of the MoJ delivering in accordance with its legal responsibilities, ensuring there is appropriate consistency in the way open justice and transparency of the justice system is delivered across courts and jurisdictions.
• Ensuring open justice and transparency principles are embedded as the justice system continues to be digitised, and there is a move to resolving more cases out of court and potentially before formal proceedings have begun.
• The importance of reliable and accessible data to scrutinise the justice system, both on individual cases and across the whole system.
• The need to ensure appropriate safeguards when implementing open justice and transparency policies, ensuring balance with other principles such as the right to privacy and judicial independence.

Next steps

The insights shared by respondents will inform the government’s policies to modernise and improve the transparency of the justice system, with the aim of ensuring it upholds the rule of law.

The post UK government publishes response to call for evidence on open justice appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

DSIT renames and refocuses AI Safety Institute to tackle security threats

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has announced that the AI Safety Institute will be renamed the AI Security Institute. The new name reflects its focus on serious AI risks with security implications, such as how the technology can be used to develop chemical and biological weapons, how it can be used to carry out cyber-attacks and enable crimes such as fraud and child sexual abuse. It will also assess the risks posed by frontier AI. However, it will not focus on bias or freedom of speech

Ofcom consults on 6GHz sharing by Wi-Fi and mobile services

Upper 6 GHz (6425–7125 MHz) has been identified for use by both Wi-Fi and mobile services. Ofcom is consulting on authorising both services to use the band through sharing. Ofcom is also consulting on authorising standard power Wi-Fi to use Lower 6 GHz (5925–6425 MHz) using an AFC database, including outdoors, if there is sufficient interest from industry. Ofcom is proposing to introduce low-power, indoor Wi-Fi into the band as early as is feasible, ideally by the end of 2025. It is further proposing to introduce mobile into the band later, once European harmonisation is more mature. Ofcom will introduce sharing mechanisms to facilitate coexistence between both services. It believes that this phased approach will maximise the benefits to citizens and consumers, allowing Wi-Fi to seed the market with devices capable of using Upper 6 GHz, and providing greater certainty to both services. Ofcom is also seeking input on industry demand for authorising standard-power Wi-Fi (including outdoor use) using an AFC database, which it believes should help meet demand for outdoor use-cases such as stadiums. The consultation ends on 8 May 2025.

EPO Observatory consults on work plan for 2026 and 2027

The European Patent Office (EPO)is consulting on its second biennial work plan of its Observatory on Patents and Technology. The new work plan will outline the topics and activities that are to constitute its output in 2026 and 2027. The plan aims to align the Observatory’s goals with the needs and expectations of everyone who has an interest in innovation. The Observatory will align its future initiatives with Europe’s transformation priorities by launching new projects that tackle current challenges and draw insights from the Draghi report on EU competitiveness and the recent EU Competitiveness Compass.  The consultation ends on 17 March.

FCA and PCR issue feedback statement on digital wallets

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) have published a feedback statement.  This follows their joint Call for Information on big tech and digital wallets last year. The two regulators have highlighted the rapid growth of digital wallets in the UK, with card transactions using digital wallets increasing from 8% in 2019 to 29% in 2023.  This has been predominantly through Apple Pay and Google Pay. The FCA and PSR emphasise their commitment to supporting growth and innovation through initiatives like Open Banking and Open Finance.  Their research found key issues include competition between digital wallets, competition between payment systems within digital wallets, operational resilience, and the regulatory framework. They believe that the CMA is best placed to deal with the competition issues due to its new powers under the Digital markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and because it has been investigating mobile ecosystems.

CAP and BCAP consult on revised guidance for less healthy food and drink advertising restrictions on TV and online

CAP and BCAP launched a further consultation about revised guidance to interpret new restrictions on advertising for less healthy food and drink products which apply from 1 October 2025. New laws prohibit adverts for “identifiable” less healthy products from appearing in Ofcom-regulated TV and on-demand programme services between 5.30 am and 9.00 pm, and from being placed in paid-for online media at any time. CAP and BCAP believe that the guidance should be revised to better reflect the law, particularly regarding how adverts without direct product references might still be restricted because their branding and content effectively promote an “identifiable” less healthy product. The consultation ends on 18 March 2025.

Government announces new restrictions on knife sales by online retailers

The UK government has announced plans to introduce stricter rules for online retailers selling knives, as well as stricter penalties for failing to follow them. Online retailers will be required to report any bulk or suspicious-looking purchases of knives on their platforms to the police. The sentence for selling weapons to under-18s will be increased from six months to up to two years in prison. This sentence will apply to individuals processing sales and company chief executives. The increased sentence will also be applicable to the sale or supply of prohibited offensive weapons, such as zombie knives. The government has also indicated that it will consult in spring 2025 about whether it should introduce a registration scheme for all online retailers selling knives. It has already announced that it will introduce significant fines in the region of £10,000 for tech executives who fail to remove illegal knife crime content from their platforms and a mandatory two-step verification system for all retailers selling knives online

EU law

Court of Appeal of UPC rules on decision on access to confidential information under rule 262A

In Daedalus Prime LLC v Xiaomi Technology Netherlands BV and another UPC_CoA_621/2024 ORD_68947/2024, the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) considered access to confidential information under rule 262A of the Rules of Procedure of the UPC. The issue had arisen with regard to US lawyers who were involved in parallel US proceedings. Under Rule 262A.6 the number of persons to whom access is restricted shall be no greater than necessary to ensure compliance with the rights of the parties to the legal proceedings to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, and shall include, at least, one natural person from each party and the respective lawyers or other representatives of those parties to the legal proceedings. Whether a particular person may be granted full access depends on the relevant circumstances of the case, including the role of that person in the proceedings before the Court, the relevance of the confidential information to the performance of that role and the trustworthiness of the person in keeping the information confidential. The Rule does not require that the person to whom access is given be an employee of a party or a representative under Article 48 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA). Such a requirement does not follow from the wording of the provision and would unduly restrict a party’s freedom to choose its assistants in the proceedings. The Court granted access to the US lawyers.

DPC welcomes European Data Protection Board statement on age assurance

The Irish Data Protection Commission has welcomed the recent statement adopted by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on age assurance. The statement, adopted at the EDPB’s February 2025 plenary meeting, lists ten principles for the compliant processing of personal data when determining the age or age range of an individual. In recognition of the importance of a consistent approach at EU level on the topic of age assurance, the EDPB wishes to provide specific guidance and high-level principles stemming  from the GDPR that should be taken in consideration when personal data is processed in the  context of age assurance. The proposed principles seek to reconcile the protection of children and the protection of personal data in the context of age assurance.

The post This Week’s Techlaw News Round-Up appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

Introduction
Technology 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 to AI-enabled software solutions.

Although Cloud Computing and AI have been around for decades, many organisations may be coming anew to such procurement arrangements, or possibly seeking to ensure that the next procurement goes better than the last one – which may have:

• overrun on timings and budgets; or
• failed to deliver the functionality or performance that the customer organisation felt that it was going to be benefitting from.

This year, organisations should set themselves the five New Year’s resolutions shown below, when it comes to their technology procurement arrangements. This will save organisations from continuing to make the same costly mistakes of the past, when it comes to such procurements.

New Year’s Resolution 1: Set Clear Objectives and Requirements
Organisations undertake technology procurements with high level objectives and requirements. Whether this is an issue, is dependent upon how ‘high’ are these objectives and requirements. It is important to adopt a ‘Goldilocks approach’ to specifying these aspects to get them ‘just right’. If they are:

• Too high level, the abstract nature of them means that:
  • it is difficult to get them specified as contractual requirements within the project timelines;
  • when they are refined further during the project, it will add to the timelines and costs, as effort will be required by both the customer organisation and the service provider to work through the implications; and
  • compatibility issues, as well as feature and performance limitations, may come ‘too late in the day’ for the project subsequently, as the project progresses and the requirements only then become clearer.
• Too low level, and:
  • the procurement exercise might take significantly longer, due to the detailed requirements needing to be formulated by the customer organisation, which the service provider will then need to consider; and
  • there might be too early a ‘lock in’ to requirements which might have benefitted from further discussion and workshopping between the customer and service provider organisation during the project – thus giving rise to subsequent timing and cost impacts.

Customer organisations also need to decide what is really important to them as part of the project, rather than adopting a ‘kitchen sink’ approach. This focus can avoid unnecessary time being wasted both during the procurement as well as the contractual negotiation process.

New Year’s Resolution 2: Get Proper and Timely Stakeholder Involvement
Linked with specifying the clear objectives and requirements for a project, it is important to get the right stakeholder involvement throughout the procurement process, from the inception, through to the completion. Having internal stakeholder input only as ‘cursory input’ at the outset, or escalation input during the contractual negotiations, will not align the project with the customer organisation’s true objectives or requirements.

Also, knowing when to rely upon external input is also important, whether that is in respect of the IT or legal aspects. This can usefully bolster the procurement process, as not all organisations will have the full breadth and depth of expertise for procurement arrangements, particularly when it is something novel to an organisation. This upfront and timely investment, can save a lot of time and cost downstream.

New Year’s Resolution 3: Set Realistic Timelines For The Project
Getting the timelines right at the start of the project ensures:

• there is sufficient time to put the Request for Proposal process together;
• the proper level of input can be obtained from stakeholders;
• the contractual process can be carried out properly – this is particularly important so:
  • that the customer and service provider relationship is not harmed due to ‘pressure cooker’ negotiations arising from any artificial timelines; and
  • that ‘corners are not cut’ on the contracting arrangements, for example:
    • due diligence elements not being conducted appropriately (such as financial standing investigations of the service provider, data protection and AI assessments);
    • contractual schedules not being appropriately populated;
    • ‘agreements to agree’ being ‘sprinkled’ throughout the contract; and
    • the practical implications of various rights, obligations and remedies, not being worked through.

New Year’s Resolution 4: Appreciate That Cloud Computing and AI Procurement Give Rise to New Considerations
Cloud Computing and AI procurement arrangements give rise to different considerations than ‘standard’ software procurement. With SaaS arrangements there will, for example, be issues of availability which need consideration, as well as how maintenance windows and outages are dealt with. Customer organisations also need to be aware that their ‘standard procurement terms’ will not be a ‘ready made fit’ for SaaS arrangements as, by way of illustration:

• SaaS providers will have implemented their existing security arrangements, so it will not be simple for them to make bespoke security adjustments for specific customer organisations. Any security requirements should be identified upfront as part of the tender process to identify any potential concerns;
• the data protection implications will need more careful thought, usually through data protection impact assessments being undertaken upfront; and
• due to the nature of the SaaS arrangement, seeking intellectual property rights ownership in any works during the contract can be problematic, depending upon the nature of the works. It can also be a ‘red herring’ for customer organisations unnecessarily spending time on such negotiations, unless the nature of the bespoke works are reusable with another provider without the service provider’s existing software platform (which will probably be unlikely to be the case when it comes to the code), or unless the nature of the bespoke work provides competitive advantage. If the service provider is willing to accept such a position, this will require the service provider to adopt a different approach to servicing the customer organisation, to ensure that the bespoke code is segregated and support teams are made aware of the restrictions, as it will obviously make future support arrangements more complex and time consuming for the service provider, with the associated cost consequences for the customer organisation.

When it comes to AI, organisations will need to approach this with a different mindset as well, as:

• although AI has been around for a long time, and organisations will already be using it, the increased power and functionality arising from new AI use (arising from a combination of the more powerful processing power available from Cloud Computing, and the use of larger data sets) means there is greater risk that the AI solution can go wrong, with greater adverse consequences for an organisation; and
• depending upon the nature of the AI use, it might require more detailed consideration under both data protection laws (such as the UK/EU GDPR), as well as under AI laws (such as the EU AI Act). Even if the EU AI Act is not applicable, organisations can usefully benefit from some of the aspects that can be leveraged under the EU AI Act, including for more responsible and ethical provision and deployment of AI.

New Year’s Resolution 5: Understand the Exit Arrangements
When entering into a technology procurement arrangement, it is also important to consider what is going to happen at the end of it – both on expiry, as well as in respect of an unexpected termination for cause by either party.

Too often, the exit arrangements are left as an ‘agreement to agree’. This might be due to wishful thinking, that either the arrangements will be agreed without any contention by both parties, or perhaps cynically, that when exit comes, it might be someone else’s problem to deal with! Either way, this is not a prudent approach to proceeding with a mission critical technology arrangement, as at the very least it will mean ‘service provider lock-in’, or at worst, it might mean significant business disruption and cost implications on termination.

Consequently, thought should be given to exit arrangements upfront, as well as how such exit arrangements might evolve during the project, so that appropriate provisions can be built into the contract at the outset.

Final Thoughts
Investing time at the outset of a project to address the above principles, might seem like it is delaying the start of a project. However, in the overall scheme of things, it should pay dividends in respect of both time and cost savings subsequently, as well as better alignment between what an organisation requires and what is delivered by a service provider.

Like all good New Year’s resolutions, organisations sticking to these should find that they experience a much better and successful year, at least, when it comes to technology procurements.

Jagvinder Singh Kang, Partner, International & UK Head of IT Law, Mills & Reeve LLP
Jagvinder.SinghKang@Mills-Reeve.com

The post New Year’s Resolutions For Procuring Technology Solutions in 2025 appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

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 Scrooge’s personal journey from miserly, cold-hearted man to generous, compassionate philanthrope.

We first meet Scrooge living in wilful ignorance of the needs of those around him, refusing to believe in helping others. This all changes however when he is visited by three ghosts who help him change his ways (demonstrating some highly effective Victorian-era prompt engineering).

Scrooge reforms, making significant differences in the lives of those around him through his newfound generosity.

Now we would like to invite you, Dear Reader, to join us in reimagining if you can (and this won’t be easy), Ebenezer Scrooge as a modern day law firm partner and the Christmas Carol story as a metaphor for digital transformation of the legal industry, driven by visionary law firm partnerships, at first fearing but eventually embracing the potential of new-fangled AI solutions. 

And so back to Dickens…

Struggling to come to terms with the fast changing world around him, Ebenezer despises the festive season. Indifferent to the suffering of others and spurning family invitations to Christmas dinner, he instead prefers to stay in his counting-house (an antiquated term for home office) hoarding his wealth.

[Maybe this isn’t so hard to imagine after all…]

But then our hero receives a visit from his deceased former business partner, Jacob Marley, who issues a stark (profit) warning of the consequences of Scrooge’s selfishness. The retired partner, and closest thing Scrooge ever had to a friend, foretells the impending arrival of three more spirits. But could this all just be a “hallucination”?!

Ghost of Christmas Past

The first spirit to appear takes Scrooge on a journey through his own past, showing him scenes from his childhood and his joyful apprenticeship with the brilliantly named Fezziwig (a great trainee supervisor and lover of 1990’s technology).  

In our parallel legal fantasy world, we see Scrooge misty-eyed with nostalgia as the firm leadership present dictaphones to lawyers as Christmas gifts. He remembers the luxury of a fax machine that scans and stores the pages of every document in its memory (making failed sends a thing of the past), the teletype terminal which has access to an entire library of legal authorities, the first Windows 3.1 PCs complete with WordPerfect, and the soothing melodic ringtone of the firm’s standard Nokia 3310, and of course, his joy at achieving a new high score on “Snake”.

This was a time when all-nighters were a badge of honour, desks groaned with the weight of redlined drafts and bookshelves were stacked with lever arch files concealing closely guarded, top secret precedents.  Meanwhile, the centre of the universe and ‘single source of truth’ for all institutional knowledge resided as much in the all-powerful secretarial pool as in the equity partners’ spacious offices. 

However, nasty rumours soon begin circulating that clients are considering using alternatives to their traditional law firm advisors, that brash, tech savvy, hardworking American lawyers were beating a path to our shores, clutching Blackberries and Palm Pilots and that long lunches were no longer the best way to win work. What’s more, capable junior lawyers, valuable clients and even more precious, legal precedents were now expected to be shared around the firm.  

Ghost of Christmas Present

The second spirit to visit our protagonist reveals alternative contemporary Christmas celebrations, taking Scrooge on a rare trip away from home to visit the warm-hearted Cratchit family, who remain upbeat in spite of highly challenging domestic circumstances, notably the frail health of one of their children, Tiny Tim.

In our parallel universe, Scrooge is prised out of his office to visit the IT department, where he meets the joyful (and suspiciously talented) ‘business services’ family, including CTO ‘Tiny’ Tim Cratch (IT), who demonstrates remarkable resilience in his mission to convert his firm to more efficient, data driven ways of working.

Scrooge has never been to the IT Department before, at least not since it was repurposed from the old wine cellar. The laptops and computers he recognises as the firm standard issue. The software he does not.

Scrooge soon realises however that today’s legal office is a confused and conflicted place, as he witnesses hordes of talented technologists and enthusiastic heads of innovation cheerfully signalling the advancement of technology, while beleaguered employees continue to wrestle with formatting documents in Word or even manually preparing their bundles exactly as they want them. 

Associate disillusionment is growing despite wage increases, as clients continue to put pressure on the billable hour fee model, which somehow still survives against all the odds. 

The business nonetheless persists in its unshakeable belief that the simple passage of time will allow its lawyers to learn things of value to clients through ‘osmosis’, and charge those clients them accordingly. 

New generations of talent rightfully demanding a better work life balance watch presentations on the importance of ‘utilisation’ and ‘recovery’, thinking how strange it all is. They are relying on the goodwill and kindness of soon to be departing equity partners to invest in emerging technology that will ensure a pipeline of bountiful future Christmases.

The most lauded of these new technologies is the mysterious and magical AI, which is self-evidently and rapidly going to take everyone’s job, sapping morale and sowing the seeds of panic across all lawyer grades, even as they dial into the “All I Want for Christmas” office party over Zoom.  

Or maybe AI could instead be the answer to all of their problems? If only they had some time out from re-doing bundles, working through client and matter inception processes and filling out appraisal forms to work out exactly how.

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

The final Dickensian spirit presents a grim, dystopian future where Scrooge dies alone and unloved.  He sees his own gravestone (not the transactional kind), prompting a desperate plea for redemption.

Despite the evidence before him, our Scrooge suffers for doggedly refusing to change his outdated ways, a victim of chronic dictation resulting in a shrunken PEP.  

The golden opportunity to leave outdated ways of working behind and to embrace a better, brighter digital roadmap has been squandered, and all lawyers are the poorer for it.  Meanwhile, Scrooge sees himself spending his final non-billable hours at home watching Love Actually on repeat on his VHS, wondering about what could have been. 

Scrooge’s demise is accompanied by the drip, drip of leaking profits and the spectral waft of erstwhile rainmaker partners departing the once hallowed, marbled lobbies of law firms across the country. 

The market has spoken, and the future belongs to alternative tech driven service providers who can better meet client needs with risk adjusted, tech driven approaches that redefine client relationships.

But maybe, just maybe, there could be another way.

The (Digital) Transformation

Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning filled with joy and determination to change. He embraces the spirit of Christmas by generously helping others, including sending a large turkey to Tiny Tim and his family.

Similarly, our alternative Scrooge is infused with a missionary zeal to invest distributable profits for the long term in identifying and implementing digitally enabled ways of working, in turn uniting clients and lawyers alike in a shared vision of financial and spiritual prosperity.

Data now resides in a perfectly beautiful, pristine lake and is accessed effortlessly by all members of the firm to provide in-depth, accurate and risk balanced insights to its clients. 

Billable hours are but a distant memory as associates use AI to unleash the power of the data that they hold, backed up with value based pricing models, in turn allowing them to skip out of the office by 4pm in order to perfect their 5km run time or bake the perfect Victoria sponge.

The Outcome

Both Dickens’ Scrooge and our legal doppelgänger become beloved figures in their community, embracing Tim Cratch (IT)’s legal tech roadmap as his own, basking in the glow of well executed digital transformation and embodying the values of kindness and generosity throughout the years.

And we may well ask ourselves, Dear Reader, why the Dickens shouldn’t this also be the case for our ‘IRL’ law firms of the future?

Let’s all be more like Scrooge 2.0 in 2025. A brighter future awaits!

Ashley Winton is a former computer designer. Having enjoyed over 25 years as a Data, AI and FinTech partner at firms such as White & Case, Paul Hastings, Pillsbury and McDermott Will & Emery, Ashley is now pursuing his dream job of developing the next generation AI powered law firm.

The post AI Christmas Carol 2.0 appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.

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 have not needed to know about it before. In these situations, this book will be a very useful reference. Over 23 chapters, divided into four parts (Computing, Hardware/Software, Data and Programming; Security; Communications; and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning), the author provides rapid but reasonably detailed sketches of many aspects of information technology.

The back cover describes the writing style as direct and engaging but it is somewhat rapid and demanding, with a great deal of information packed into very factual sentences, although the author’s views and personality shine through at times. There are more general introductory texts on computing that are more of a gentle read, with illustrations and diagrams, and more text devoted to scene-setting and high-level explanation. However, the intended audience for this volume is busy professionals who probably have some existing exposure to technology and need to ‘get up to speed’ on some specific problem domain for a pressing matter, either a piece of research, a business negotiation, or litigation. For that purpose, the book works well. Reading it cover-to-cover would be a challenging proposition, although one that could be beneficial to the reader in the long term.

I have a somewhat technical background, in a variety of roles (programming, web development, network administration) – enough to chuckle at the mention of the debate on the difference between developers and software engineers – and found that there were things I could learn from this text. Some of this was because best practice technology has changed since my primary focus became the legal academy (the move from Master Boot Record to Globally Unique Identifier partition tables in hard disks, for example). Some was because there are new (or at least new to me) technologies that have become quite important: the most obvious example is so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, which is extensively covered. Although I make an effort to keep up to date, I anticipate returning to this part repeatedly to fill the gaps in my knowledge that I am sure remain, and was glad to see that it places technology in a human and social context, acknowledging and exploring issues of transparency, accuracy, and bias.

The foreword states that the author aims ‘to go one step beyond high-level’ and the book succeeds in that. Technologies are presented in sufficient detail to give the reader a little more than a basic understanding but complexities are generally acknowledged although not explored in depth. (Doing so would make the text much longer and more cumbersome.) For example, the discussion of object-oriented programming refers to inheritance and polymorphism, which are key for programmers to understand, but does not explain them, as they are probably not necessary for a lawyer to grasp except in quite complex circumstances.

There is a strong focus on security, with explanations of risks, guidance on how to avoid them, and many examples of failures to encourage adoption of the author’s wisdom. Given how important cybersecurity is and how much more important it becomes as our workplaces and personal lives are digitally mediated, this is very welcome. Legal issues are mentioned from time to time but not discussed in any detail.

On my reading, the text is generally correct, although there are some minor quibbles. At least two of the samples of program code given contain errors, but given that these are intended as illustrative examples rather than something for the user to type in and use, this might not be important. Also, there are no suggestions for additional reading, but this would not be feasible as it would add significantly to the length and require constant updating.

A free PDF addendum is available on the author’s website, containing diagrams and illustrations, and updates to the text.

Overall, this is a very useful book which any busy professional who regularly finds themselves wondering how some new technology that they have just heard of but need to understand works should have to hand.

About the book

• W. Kuan Hon
• Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date: 2024 
• ISBN: 9781803923925 
• 573 pages

Reviewed by Rónán Kennedy, School of Law, University of Galway

The post Technology and Security for Lawyers and Other Professionals appeared first on Society for Computers & Law.