On Monday 11 October Technology Law Update will be moving over to the Mills & Reeve website. It will sit alongside nine other blogs to further enhance our ever expanding legal insights section, also containing legal briefings, news, webinars and events. The new blog will continue to publish the same regular flow of legal expertise but because it will be hosted on our main website it will be easier to find further relevant content, whether that’s legal insights or details about Mills & Reeve’s legal offering and services. If you visit this blog after 11 October you will simply be redire ..read more

Innovators developing new technologies have plenty to think about, and maintaining secrecy is not always top of the list. However, a recent case (Claydon Yield-O-Meter v Mzuri) shows how important it is to take care over this to avoid losing patent protection altogether. The prototype test The patent in question concerned agricultural technology, although the same principles will apply to other kinds of inventions. Here, the inventor of a new seed drill tested a prototype on private land before filing for patent protection. The innovative seed drill allowed for the planting of seed in a w ..read more

Simon Elsegood explains how this will change public sector investment to develop the economy, following the UK's departure from the EU: Move over State Aid - make room for the Subsidy Control Bill ..read more

The EU has adopted final versions of the two adequacy decisions that were issued in draft earlier this year. These permit personal data flows to the UK under the GDPR and the Law Enforcement Directive. This is just in time - the interim arrangement under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was due to end on 30 June. The decisions come into force today and will expire after four years, unless renewed. The Commission will monitor the legal situation in the UK for any deviation from the level of protection currently in place. This could lead to the decisions being suspended, repealed or ame ..read more

The European Parliament has asked the EU Commission to take another look at the UK's data protection adequacy assessment. What will this mean for cross-border data transfers? Paul Knight takes a look. The UK’s data adequacy status in the balance ..read more

This week the EU Commission published its legislative proposals for regulating artificial intelligence. Broad application The planned regulation is broadly cast, with a clear intention to influence the development of AI technology globally. It will affect both public and private sector entities, wherever they are based, if the AI system is put on the EU market, or its use affects individuals in the EU. Both developers and users of AI systems are covered. Extraterritorial effect The rules will apply, with some exceptions, to providers offering AI systems within the EU, wherever they are based ..read more

Around the world, autonomous vehicles are being developed and tested, different business models and use cases analysed, and connection systems created. Recent reports see Chinese AI and internet giant Baidu taking forward testing of new types of commercial operations in Cangzhou, northern China. In the UK, the StreetWise project, led by self-driving technology firm Five, has been testing vehicles on busy streets in London to analyse user trust and confidence. Alongside the roll-out of new technology sits the developing legal oversight. This is a necessary element, both to provide developers wi ..read more

Where an individual is hired to do creative or innovative work, the employer will normally expect to be the owner of their work product. But what happens if a skilled member of staff carries on out of hours and at home? Can they assert personal ownership of what they create, or is the work product still the property of their employer? IP specialist Bart Topps takes a look at a recent case and offers some tips for employers: Late night coding: who owns the results?   ..read more

Currently, transfers of personal data from the EEA to the UK are protected on a transitional basis only until 30 June 2021 under last December's post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement. However, the situation after that is currently uncertain. The EU Commission has now published draft adequacy decisions for transfers of personal data to the United Kingdom, under both the GDPR and the Law Enforcement Directive. This is welcome news, as it will provide a greater degree of certainty for organisations who rely on cross-border data flows, and particular those of in data-rich sectors. As might b ..read more

A post-Brexit trade dealwas finally pinned down on Christmas Eve. This will provide some comfort to organisations around data flows. A temporary extension will allow data to be transferred from EEA countries to the UK - hopefully giving enough time for an adequacy decision to be put in place.  More on that here EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement: data protection and related aspects. For an overview of the trade deal, see Brexit: what did we get for Christmas?   ..read more