Topic: Regulation

Directive (EU) 2024/2853 on liability for defective products (the Revised Product Liability Directive) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 18 November 2024.

Earlier this year we looked at trends in M&A investment in the technology sector, highlighting the TMT sector was the best performing sector in 2023 in terms of deal value and volume. The sector has remained fairly subdued this year, but are there signs this could be changing? We explore with our colleagues in the UK, Europe and China the outlook for the sector in their regions, and the impact of regulation on M&A investment in the tech sector.

We have published an article, EU: An overview of the European digital strategy, explaining the aims and key components of the EU digital strategy, outlining at a high-level key legislation that has been published in this space in the past three years and highlighting the way in which the various legislative instruments interact with each other and with European data privacy rules.

As public awareness of Web 3.0, the metaverse and other associated technologies increases, there is further pressure on governments, businesses and regulatory bodies to keep abreast of both the possibilities and the risks of these new worlds.

Influence and content creation have revolutionized the approach to marketing. In the absence of specific regulations applicable to this new form of advertising, influence marketing has been - until now - solely governed by existing law, in particular advertising law and consumer law.

The usage and adoption of artificial intelligence (which refer to broadly herein to also include the application of AI to analytics of large data sets and in the context of machine learning (which includes the subsets of ML operations and deep learning)) has increased significantly over the past few years.

In 2020, the European Commission published its central digital policy document “Shaping Europe’s Digital Future” which outlined its digital strategy for the next five years.

The European Commission (along with the US FTC and DOJ, UK CMA, German FCO and others), has been focused on ensuring that so-called “killer acquisitions” in the digital and life sciences sectors are reviewed. Against this background, the General Court’s decision in Illumina/Grail is of key importance to companies acquiring start-ups.

In the coming years, data collected by vehicles will be subject to a new EU regulatory regime consisting of horizontal rules applicable across many industries and vertical rules designed specifically for the automotive sector.

The UK Government has added two new duties to the proposed Online Safety Bill (the Bill) that are aimed at protecting people against anonymous online abuse.