Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

Welcome to the first post in our Spotlight series, where we will talk with a leader in a particular field or emerging area of interest to technology and sourcing lawyers and professionals.

Planning for a change in service providers can sometimes feel like a logistical nightmare, but with proper planning and a long-term outlook, you can ward off operational issues that may arise during the process of transitioning back in-house or to a replacement provider. In this post, we’ll discuss at a high level some of the items to consider when planning a change in service providers, or ideally to consider and build into any new service provider agreement at the outset.

As we noted in our Outsourcing 2021 webinar last week, a lot has happened and changed in the last 12 months since January 2020. There have been significant and unprecedented changes in the way our companies do business, the way we engage and interact with colleagues, and the way we interact with external parties, including how our companies and each of us leverage technology to market, process transactions, and otherwise communicate.

The inclusion of acceptance requirements, including acceptance criteria for key activities and deliverables, within a service agreement can provide a blueprint for a service engagement’s success, and should not be overlooked during the contract drafting process. In this post, we’ll discuss at a high level some of the items a contract drafter should consider when drafting acceptance requirements.

If you have been involved with SaaS agreements or agreements that are for, or are enabled by, cloud services, you have seen or even drafted provisions relating to the right to use data processed on or generated through the use of the cloud platform.

In November 2020, Massachusetts voters approved Question One, a ballot initiative amending the Commonwealth’s 2012 Right to Repair Law. The amendment provides that motor vehicles sold in Massachusetts “with model year 2022” will be required “to equip any such vehicles that use telematics systems – systems that collect and wirelessly transmit mechanical data to a remote server – with a standardized open access data platform. Owners of motor vehicles with telematics systems would get access to mechanical data through a mobile device application.”

Morgan Lewis outsourcing partners Barbara Melby and Mike Pierides will kick off the new year with a webinar discussing the promises and challenges of the outsourcing industry in 2021.

The European Commission (Commission) published the first draft of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on December 15 2020. Morgan Lewis previously reported on the anticipated DSA.

The UK government published a Green Paper on December 15 that includes proposals to shape the future of public procurement in the United Kingdom by speeding up and simplifying public sector procurement processes.

The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020 was signed into law on December 4, resulting in the first federal regulation of the Internet of Things (IoT).