Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

Brand partnerships are expanding beyond traditional sponsorships and celebrity endorsements into arrangements that can combine licensing, content creation, product development, distribution, and data sharing. As those relationships become more complex, contracts need to clearly define the partnership, control of brand assets, and what happens to jointly created materials when the relationship ends.

Cyber insurance traditionally assumes a familiar sequence: an attacker gains access to a system, data is stolen or operations are disrupted, and a claim follows. Autonomous systems may complicate every step, including whether the event qualifies as a cyber incident at all.

Signing up for a streaming service might be faster than choosing what to watch, with only a few taps unlocking a month of movies, a season of sports, or enough airline Wi-Fi to make a long flight feel shorter. That convenience, however, rests on a recurring contract that may continue after the vacation ends, change price while it remains in effect, and provide less control over content than the word “subscription” suggests.

A February 2026 IT disruption illustrates how technology dependencies can affect cruise operations. Carnival Cruise Line said the issue arose during planned maintenance and affected embarkation, disembarkation, and other technology tools. Reports of the disruption also identified impacts to Wi-Fi and the Carnival HUB app, while navigation and safety systems remained operational.

A traveler asks an AI concierge to book a quiet oceanfront hotel in Naples for the weekend. Only after the confirmations arrive does the traveler discover that the bot selected Naples, Florida, while the flight is headed to Rome. The hotel is nonrefundable. As AI concierge services move beyond suggesting restaurants and into booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and activities, errors can quickly result in actual charges and disputes over responsibility. When a bot selects the wrong dates, overlooks a cancellation restriction, or books a hotel it was intended merely to recommend, the question becomes who is responsible for the error and the resulting costs.

On 2 August 2026, the transparency obligations in Article 50 of the EU AI Act began to apply. Relative to Article 50, the EU Digital Omnibus (which amended the EU AI Act) only deferred certain specific obligations. As such, the bulk of the Article 50 obligations are already applicable to organizations subject to the EU AI Act. Below is a high-level overview. An upcoming accompanying LawFlash will examine the obligations and exceptions contained in Article 50, the Commission’s Guidelines, and the Code of Practice referenced below in more detail.

After a day of flight delays, crowded airports, and rental-car lines, the corporate traveler finally reaches the hotel, drops a bag in the room, and opens a laptop. The hotel Wi-Fi portal requests a room number, last name, and perhaps an email address. At the bottom sits a familiar checkbox: “I Agree.” Click. Congratulations, you may have just entered into the least-negotiated contract of your trip. Hotel Wi-Fi terms vary, and their enforceability may depend on applicable law and how the terms are presented. But publicly available terms reveal that the complimentary connection can come with a substantial set of conditions covering liability, data collection, dispute resolution, and acceptable use. Although most travelers will never have a dispute over hotel Wi-Fi, corporate travelers should understand what may be included before using the connection to access sensitive business information.

As a follow-up to Part 1, in which we discussed increased reliability on sourcing teams’ input for commercial negotiations, this Part 2 discusses additional common provisions sourcing teams should consider in their oversight and management of the contracting process.

Sourcing teams are assuming increasing responsibilities in the contracting process, playing a central role in managing an array of issues, including legal, operational, financial, and information security risks. In an effort to streamline contracting lifecycles and reduce legal costs, companies often prefer legal counsel to focus on complex issues around intellectual property rights, indemnification, or regulatory compliance. This often leaves important unresolved issues to be negotiated by the sourcing team.

Fortunately, by focusing on certain terms of outsized impact that arise across deals, sourcing departments can contribute significantly to managing their companies’ risk profiles.

While a freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis often centers on patent or trademark searches, contractual commitments can establish the practical boundaries—or maze—of a company’s degrees of freedom. Organizations with a checklist of high-level issues to be addressed during contract discussion and negotiation (such as liability, compliance, and data protection) should consider adding FTO to that list. With a more holistic perspective of the FTO landscape and with business and technical teams’ input, commercial counsel can find creative ways to complete the puzzle.