Cyberlaw 101

The Intersection of Governance and Innovation

When most people think of technology law, the first thing that often comes to mind is intellectual property law— the protection of the products of the human imagination and intellect, mostly in the form of copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and other forms of invention. In essence, this is the protection of the products of innovation from those who would use them without authorization or claim those products as their own.

However, technology law as a whole has expanded significantly beyond intellectual property, as advances in areas such as the use of the Internet, cryptocurrency, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the metaverse, data privacy, cybersecurity, and of course, generative artificial intelligence (AI), create new and novel challenges for governing bodies and legal professionals. This area of technology law is often referred to as “cyberlaw,” and this is the focus of our work here at LexVirtua.

To add to that complexity, we can think of two ways that technology impacts the legal profession: externally, where lawyers and legal professionals work with and on behalf of clients on technological issues, and internally, where technology is used within the law firm or department to streamline and simplify operations, allowing professionals to work efficiently. We will focus on these interesting and impactful topics here as well.

The Basics:

The Internet: also known as the World Wide Web, is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies, that power multiple forms of communication, from telephony to email, instant messaging, websites, and file sharing.

Platforms: systems that are programmable and can be customized by third-party developers for mutual economic benefit. These can be adapted to countless needs and niches that may or may not be related to the goals of the platform developers. There are many and diverse types of platforms, but they all are structures that are used to build or run business applications. Typically, platform owners are not legally liable for the applications that are housed on their platforms, but this is an emerging area of cyberlaw.

Examples include: iOS and Windows (operating system platforms), Google Drive and Dropbox (storage platforms), iOS and Android (mobile platforms), WordPress and Joomla (content management system platforms), YouTube and Facebook (media platforms), and Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure (cloud computing platforms), among others.

App: abbreviation for “application.” Typically, a small, specific computer software program designed for and using a platform. This is created by third party developers or users for many business uses, from retail to gaming, to media and much more. Apps can be created for desktops and tablets, but are most commonly created for mobile devices, using the popular iOS and Android platforms. App creators are most usually legally responsible for the impact of their applications.

Examples include: Candy Crush Saga (gaming app), Amazon.com (retail app), IMDB (media app), TikTok (social media app), among others.

Internet of Things (IoT): most commonly devices with sensors, processing ability, software, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communications networks.