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The European Accessibility Act (EAA) can be enforced by Member States from 28 June 2025.  Impacting businesses across a broad range of sectors, the EAA applies to many categories of consumer products and services, particularly digital technologies, which range from payment terminals and smartphones to consumer banking services and online shops. The aim: to make all these products and services accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.  While the EAA applies to products and services provided within the EU (including by UK-based businesses), as we explore later in this briefing, businesses operating exclusively in the UK market also cannot afford to be complacent about accessibility.

On 28 June 2025, Member States can start enforcing the European Accessibility Act ("EAA") – a deadline which may have crept up on some firms in the banking and financial services sector.  The EAA applies to a broad range of financial services and associated digital technologies, from payment terminals to online banking platforms. This means banks, payment services providers, e-money and other providers of financial services to retail customers must review their customer interfaces, products and related documentation to ensure compliance.  If EAA compliance has slipped down your "to do" list, now is the time to act.  As we discuss later in this briefing, businesses operating in the UK market also cannot afford to be complacent about accessibility.

Adidas, The North Face, Cartier and Victoria's Secret are the most recent names to join the ranks of retailers – Marks & Spencer, Harrods, and the Co-op – to be hit by cyber attacks in recent months. Rich in customer data, with significant resources and a strong reputation to protect, a large retailer is an attractive target for cyber criminals.

Welcome to the fourth edition of Travers Smith's Outsourcing Spotlight. In this issue, we look at whether a possible change in the approach to equal pay could undermine incentives to outsource.  We also discuss the implications of the UK Government's Immigration White Paper, new legislation on premises and consumer-facing outsourcings and take an in-depth look at longer term outsourcings.

Our regular round-up of recent and forthcoming developments in law and practice for in-house counsel.

The UK Government considers ransomware attacks to be the greatest of all serious and organised cybercrime threats. In response, it has launched a consultation on three measures to reduce payments to cybercriminals and increase ransomware incident reporting.

For businesses within the scope of the Online Safety Act, achieving compliance and swiftly adapting to extensive new guidance is a significant challenge. The contrasting approaches in Europe to online safety and the tensions with the US over content moderation further complicate the landscape.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published the provisional decision in its cloud services market investigation.  It provisionally recommends that the cloud service activities of the two largest players, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, should be investigated using the CMA's new powers to regulate Big Tech under the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.

The Supreme Court's long-awaited judgment in SkyKick v Sky has made it easier to challenge trade mark registrations in relation to overly broad classes of goods and services on the basis that they were applied for in bad faith. This briefing provides an overview of this significant decision and what it means for trade mark owners.    

Many businesses may not have heard of the European Accessibility Act ("EAA").  If it has slipped under your radar, now is the time to take note because this legislation has a broad reach across many sectors, significant implications for product and services design (as well as documentation) and a looming compliance deadline.  The EAA becomes applicable from 28 June 2025 and aims to ensure that many categories of consumer products and services, particularly digital technologies ranging from payment terminals and smartphones to banking services and online shops, are accessible to all, including people with disabilities. 

The Data (Use and Access) Bill ("DUA Bill") began its parliamentary journey in the House of Lords on 23 October 2024.  It resurrects many of changes from the previous government's Data Protection and Digital Information Bill ("DPDI Bill"), which fell away before the general election.  This briefing focuses on the package of data protection and e-privacy reforms proposed in the DUA Bill, although the bill's ambit is much wider than data protection, also covering data sharing and digital verification schemes.  Overall, its data protection reforms are more limited than previously, and certain controversial measures from the DPDI Bill have been dropped. 

Welcome to the third edition of the Travers Smith Outsourcing Spotlight. In this issue, we look at the impact on outsourcing of the new Labour Government's employment reforms and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.  We also discuss a range of other topics including artificial intelligence, smart contracts and a recent Supreme Court decision on force majeure clauses.

Our regular round-up of recent and forthcoming developments in law and practice for in-house counsel.

Gearing up for exit or making a strategic acquisition can be a daunting task, and it is important to be prepared. This briefing highlights the key legal due diligence issues to arise in relation to software businesses in the UK and EU, focussing on intellectual property and trading arrangement aspects. 

How do you know that your business owns or has the relevant rights to the intellectual property in its software, particularly where the rights are not registrable?  What can your business do to manage the risk of its developed software infringing third party intellectual property rights? This briefing looks at key strategies to help manage intellectual property risks in software development.

If open source software did not exist, firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software, according to a 2024 Harvard Business School paper . In fact, Synopsys' 2024 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report states that 96% of codebases contain open source software. So, what is open source software?

Smart contracts have been somewhat eclipsed by the recent focus on artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI. But as we explain below, smart contracts have their uses – and it's possible that in future, generative AI could complement smart contracts to further automate the contracting process.

As technology evolves, and with burgeoning markets in artificial intelligence, software companies are not only in the position of needing to comply with GDPR themselves but are also pivotal in the design and operation of products or services that allow their customers to achieve GDPR compliance – understanding and smoothing the compliance path for customers can set a software company apart from the competition, fortifying its position within the marketplace.  This article suggests key GDPR compliance strategies.

Welcome to the sixth episode in our series of podcasts exploring the key legal issues relating to the development and use of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence tools can be a game changer in outsourcing and other contracts for services - promising big wins in terms of costs, time, accuracy, scalability and productivity, to benefit both sides of the negotiating table. To reap those benefits, it is important to stay on top of the "new" risks associated with the use of AI in these arrangements.