CHANGING TIMES, BUT NO CHANGE TO DISPUTES
It may be a little time before shared, electric, driverless cars appear at people’s doors, to deliver them in a seamless way to the most appropriate train station and connect them speedily to a distant city after just a couple of clicks on their mobile phones, while the car drives off on its own to recharge its batteries. That, however, appears to be the future of intelligent travel and smart cities.
Such technological developments are transformative and the opportunities they present clearly huge. A new technology company is reported to start up every hour in the UK and the Internet of Things (IoT) – the technology that connects devices to the internet and allows those devices to work together on a system through machine to machine communication – is predicted to be an industry worth trillions in the next five to 10 years.
Disputes lawyers will be conscious that such amazing advances in technology are inevitably accompanied by risk, challenges and litigation. While remaining agile, companies and organisations need to ensure that they are armed with as much legal protection as possible when procuring, developing, providing and using these technologies.
Jan-Mar 2018 issue
CMS