{b} From Andrew Dodd, Technology Disputes Partner, Field Fisher Waterhouse:
andrew.dodd@ffw.com{/b}
Provided the judgment doesn’t come through in December, the big news in IT contract case law in 2010 will undoubtedly be the long awaited and possibly seminal judgment in the BskyB and EDS litigation. This will be highly significant for IT suppliers. Those suppliers will be particularly interested in the judge’s view of EDS’ pre-contractual representations to BskyB and their impact, if any, on EDS’ contractual exclusion and limitation of liability clauses.
{b}From Brian Harley, who is admitted to the Rolls in Ireland and the UK and is currently pursuing studies at Columbia University in New York{/b}
{i}Delivery of services over the Internet as a trade issue{/i}
2009 saw the European Parliament pass a {resolution: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-0049&language=EN} declaring Internet filtering to be a ‘disguised barrier to trade’. When the Chinese Government announced that all PCs sold in China should come bundled with the Green Dam Youth Escort Internet filtering software, the outcry drew on the language of international trade as much as on free speech principles. With the advent of cloud computing, there is a growing realisation that strict EU data protection laws give rise to difficult problems regarding the geographic location of data, leading some commentators to speak of “data protectionism” (see Phil Wainewright’s blog post {here: http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/connectedweb/2009/02/data_protectionism_threatens_t.php}). Even though more and more services are being delivered over the internet, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) provides only weak protections. In 2010 and the coming years, expect the delivery of services over the internet to be increasingly recognized as an issue of international trade.
