On 15 May, the ICO published the monetary penalty notice (MPN) in relation to the £12.7 million fine it imposed on TikTok in April. This MPN and its accompanying annexes set out details of TikTok’s non-compliance with data protection law and the reasons why the ICO considered that a fine was appropriate.

On 11 May 2023, members of the European Parliament passed their compromise text of the AI Act (the AI Act) at the committee stage, taking this law a step closer to being finalised.

In March 2023, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology published a white paper detailing its proposed approach to regulating artificial intelligence (AI) in the UK. It takes a different approach to the EU with a non-statutory principles-based framework to be applied by regulators in each sector.

Once relegated to the fringe of the crypto/FinTech communities, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are suddenly mainstream, appearing in new and increasingly commercial use cases, such as financial services, automotive industry applications, electronic gaming, sport highlights, music albums, film, art, fashion and digital branding.

In December 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a powerful AI-powered chatbot that could handle users’ questions and requests for information or content in a convincing and confident manner.

As recent innovations in Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) such as ChatGPT ignite debate over issues such as the legal status of non-humans, privacy implications of novel computing abilities, and rights of intelligent systems’ creators over output, similar considerations confront another emerging computing field—one involving human cells.

The recent case of James Kemball Ltd v. "K" Line (Europe) Ltd [2022] EWHC 2239 (Comm) serves as a useful reminder to give careful consideration to the effect of so-called “sole and exclusive remedies” clauses contained in contracts before purporting to terminate them.

On February 8, 2023, a jury found Rothschild liable for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and cybersquatting based on Rothschild’s use of the Birkin mark to promote and sell the MetaBirkins NFTs.

The Commercial Court in Jinxin Inc v Aser Media Pte Ltd and others & Others has ruled that an employer’s right to monitor and access private information of an employee held on its systems does not extend to a loss of confidentiality in those documents, and therefore a loss of privilege, as against the employer.

Following a surge in M&A activity in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, deal making in the Tech sector slowed significantly through the remainder of 2022. Overall, the outlook for Tech M&A at the start of 2023 is more positive than it was at the end of 2022.