by Giacomo Lusardi and Alessandra Faranda The government’s vision of AI: a strategy and a bill In the past few days, an executive summary prepared by AgiD (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) and the Department for Digital Transformation was made available on the web. It summarizes the vision and architecture of Italy’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the next three years through four main pillars: scientific research, public administration, business, and training. The document helps understand the Italian government’s vision of AI and contextualizes the domestic AI bill expected to be pr ..read more

OPEN INSURANCE: A DEFINITION Open Insurance is a way for insurance companies and other players in the insurance sector to share personal and non-personal data, usually via standardized and interoperable APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) (EIOPA, 2021). They can then use that data to create new products and services and improve existing ones. Open Insurance data include, for example, Know Your Customer (KYC) data, premiums paid, coverage, claims reporting and compensation, and data from IoT sensors. And on-demand, pay-as-you-go, parametric policies, more efficient comparators, and innova ..read more

Today marks the end of this edition of Milan Fashion Week SS2023, which saw colourful dresses with ton sur ton combinations on the catwalk, between similar and complementary nuances, as well as our fashion law column. Fil-rouge among fashion maisons of this MFW edition is colour. One of the representatives of this trend in Italy is Valentino Garavani, who – from the Paris défilé to that in Milan – made pink the undisputed protagonist of the catwalks, making it a true philosophy of life. Website, social pages and atelier are all pink-coloured, a shade studied and developed in collaboration with ..read more

by Giacomo Lusardi and Nicoletta Iurilli The Italian rules on service contracts (appalto) have recently been supplemented with Section 1677-bis of the Italian Civil Code, introduced by Section 1, paragraph 819, Law No. 234 of December 30, 2021, and then replaced by Section 37-bis, Decree Law No. 36 of April 30, 2022, converted with amendments into Law No. 79 of June 29, 2022. The new provision is titled “supply of more than one service concerning the transfer of goods” and provides that “if the contract has as its subject matter, jointly, the provision of two or more logistics services relatin ..read more

by Giacomo Lusardi and Arianna Angilletta On April 21, 2021, along with the proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and as part of the broader “Artificial Intelligence Package,” the European Commission issued the proposal for a Regulation on machinery products that will replace the Machinery Directive (Directive 2006/42/EC) currently in force. In our two-part article, we will investigate the crucial aspects of the proposal, considering the discussion on the legislative procedure by European institutions. In this first part, we will focus on the new obligations on manufacturer ..read more

By Arianna Angilletta and Chiara D’Onofrio Nowadays, the textile sector represents the second most polluting industry in the world after the oil industry and is responsible for 20% of global water waste – due to the various processes the products undergo such as dyeing and finishing – and 10% of carbon dioxide emissions (more than all international flights and shipping combined). According to the European Commission’s action plan for a new circular economy, textiles are the fourth highest-pressure category for the use of primary raw materials and water (after food, housing, and transport) and ..read more

Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people, sometimes facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality devices, which would blur the barrier between online and offline. No industry has embraced the metaverse quite like fashion. The likes of Gucci, Balenciaga, and Burberry are spinning up fashion and accessories that you will never even wear in the metaverse. Million of users buy clothing and skins for their digital avatars and many fashion brands have collaborated with the videogam ..read more

Following its April 2021 proposal for a European Artificial Intelligence Regulation, the Commission comes back to the topic of liability for damages in the digital age with a consultation open to the public until January 10, 2022. The purpose of the consultation Having launched the first part of the public consultation on October 18, 2021, the European Commission resumed the work started in 2018 in the context of the evaluation of the Product Liability Directive (Directive) (85/374/EEC). On that occasion, the Commission questioned the Directive’s relevance and effectiveness in view of the chal ..read more

by Elena Varese and Federico Maria Di Vizio On November 30, 2021, the Legislative Decree no. 198/2021 (“Decree”) was published in the Italian Official Gazette, transposing, with some changes, the EU Directive 2019/633 (“Directive”) on unfair commercial practices in business-to-business relations in the agricultural and food supply chain. On an important, practical note, the Decree has entered into force on December 15, 2021. Opening the article, we premise that the one of the differences between the Directive and the Decree can be found in the fact that while the first provided that its provis ..read more

By Lara Mastrangelo and Valentina Mazza NFTs’ legal implications for the art, music and fashion industries Do you remember Magritte’s famous painting displaying a pipe with the wording “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, or Duchamp’s irreverent readymades? Well, keep them in mind, as it is from that moment on that artists started questioning the relationship between art and the objects that embody it. And yet, the detachment between the work of art and the object that incorporates it has now reached another (revolutionary) level: artworks which do not exist in reality, or rather, artworks which exist ..read more