Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

We recently wrote about the emerging trend of content moderation outsourcing. In this blog post, we turn our attention to another growing trend: legal process outsourcing.

Open-source software (OSS) representations and warranties are an integral part of the intellectual property (IP) representations and warranties in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions and financings, as M&A transaction documents regularly include requests for a seller to represent and warrant that it has policies in place regarding the use of OSS, has provided such policies to the acquirer or investor, and has not deviated from such policies. These representations and warranties are important, but they are routinely and necessarily backstopped by the due diligence process.

Although the advent of readily accessible social media platforms has allowed for the proliferation of user content worldwide, there is increasing pressure on social media platforms and related companies to moderate the content that their users publish. Due to the decentralized nature of content sharing, companies are increasingly turning to third parties to handle their content moderation needs. As a result, content moderation has become one of the latest emerging trends in outsourcing services.

The UK government has released updates to its Digital, Data, and Technology (DDaT) Playbook, outlining guidance and relevant considerations for entities dealing with DDaT projects in this fast-changing sector. The DDaT Playbook works in conjunction with other publications from the Cabinet Office Sourcing Programme, such as the Sourcing Playbook.

As cybersecurity breaches remain a common threat globally, the UK government has published a cybersecurity breach survey detailing various cybersecurity policies, processes, and reliances for all types of business.

The United Kingdom published a roadmap detailing its goal of becoming a technological superpower by 2030 through the use of its new International Technology Strategy and opening of the Technology Centre of Expertise. The Foreign Secretary and the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary have stated goals of strengthening the UK’s international connections and collaboration in order to build on the UK’s strengths in the technology sector during this new strategy’s launch.

In our prior post in this two-part series on less commonly discussed technology commercialization options, we addressed how open-source software (OSS) providers may make money on their products. In this Part 2, we’ll look at another technology commercialization strategy, white labeling.

As part of our Spotlight series, we invited litigation partners Dana E. Becker (Philadelphia), Shon Lo (Chicago), and Krista Vink Venegas, Ph.D. (Chicago), to talk about recent trends and issues in IP-related and other commercial litigation that would be of particular interest to our readers. Dana, Shon, and Krista are deeply knowledgeable practitioners in the IP and commercial contracts space who handle a broad spectrum of leading-edge and high-profile litigation for our clients.

When the topic of technology commercialization strategies comes up, the most common options typically mentioned include the sale of a technology or building a business around technology by selling products or providing licenses or subscriptions to technology-based solutions.

Despite global shocks and forecasts of a global recession, economies in the Middle East showed "extraordinarily fast" growth in 2022, according to the World Bank. The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain—all show commitment to further growth and place great value on diversification of their historically oil and gas dominated economies, with digital transformation, artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud-first, and emerging technologies at the core of their strategic development.