Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

As the sports industry looks ahead to 2026, sponsorship agreements are becoming more complex, more strategic, and more closely scrutinized. We sat down with Doneld “Don” Shelkey, a leading sports sponsorship and commercial agreements lawyer at our firm, to discuss what he’s seeing in the market and what sponsors and rights holders should be thinking about now.

As AI continues to reshape technology transactions, deal lawyers have been compelled to revisit longstanding allocations of risk, revisit boilerplate, and develop new contracting mechanics to address novel uncertainty. While the core goals of technology deals remain the same—facilitating commercial outcomes and protecting the business—AI introduces distinctive pressure points across intellectual property, data, regulatory exposure, and liability frameworks.

As technology transactions continue to evolve rapidly, staying ahead of trends, innovations, and regulatory shifts is crucial. Join our Tech & Sourcing Webinar Series on January 22 at 12:00 pm ET/11:00 am CT for an insightful discussion on Tech Transactions: The Year Ahead. This session, featuring Doneld G. Shelkey, Marina G. Aronchik, and A. Benjamin Klaber, will delve into developments in artificial intelligence, data-driven deals, and new sourcing models, providing key insights to help navigate the changing landscape in 2026.

AI usage policies have become the new norm as businesses across industries adopt various AI technologies in hopes of enhancing productivity and staying competitive, with many companies now revisiting and updating their AI usage policies to become more permissive while aiming to meet any transparency requirements.

Kari Krusmark, a partner in our technology transactions, outsourcing, and commercial contracts practice, is a leading advisor in complex technology initiatives, outsourcing arrangements, and digital transformation projects. With deep background guiding global companies through high-value technology deals, evolving regulatory requirements, and vendor ecosystem shifts, Kari has a unique perspective on how organizations should prepare for the rapidly changing technology and outsourcing landscape. Her insights highlight the key trends shaping 2026 and what businesses should be doing now to stay ahead.

One of the key concepts in contracting for generative AI (GenAI) is allocating rights to data that the GenAI tool processes and generates, as well as any data used to train, test, and improve the underlying AI model. A new concern in these contracts relates to the use of a GenAI tool (or data generated by this tool) for competitive purposes and corresponding contractual restrictions. This blog post outlines some of the relevant considerations when evaluating and negotiating contractual provisions relating to these data rights and use restrictions.

We invite you to join us for the next presentation of our Tech & Sourcing webinar series Navigating the Global Landscape Through Innovation on Thursday, December 11, 2025 at 12:00 pm ET, focused on global capability centers.

As the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) proliferates, customers and vendors face unique challenges in contract negotiations. This post discusses these challenges, offering viewpoints from both perspectives.

Please join us for a webinar co-hosted with local Indian counsel examining the key issues impacting deployment and use of technology in India.

As our colleagues Brad Nes and Sergio Oehninger discussed in a recent Insight, upcoming events such as the 2026 Men’s World Cup and Winter Olympics serve as a timely reminder to businesses involved in live events to consider and revisit the importance of insurance in minimizing unanticipated financial losses.