Outsourcing & technology

Our outsourcing and technology lawyers advise on:

• outsourcing agreements, including the initial drafting of the agreement, the commercial implications of specific provisions and the negotiation of contractual terms.  We have particular experience in major projects, regularly advising on multi-million pound outsourcing agreements, and have significant experience in contracting in the defence and security sectors.
• the procurement of technology solutions, how these can be integrated within a client’s business and the possible approaches to the provision of maintenance and/or support in respect of such technology solutions (in particular the “service integration” model)
• development arrangements – including software development delivered under both the traditional “waterfall” and more modern “agile” delivery methods
• the commercial issues to consider in distribution and licensing arrangements, subsequently assisting with the drafting and negotiation of such agreements
• 'software as a service' models, together with the cloud based solutions which are increasingly common in the TMT sector. We invest significant time in keeping abreast of developments in this relatively new field and this, coupled with our experience in dealing with cloud based outsourcing contracts makes us the right choice to assist you on any dealings you may have which have a cloud based element to them
• intellectual property rights, technology transfers, assignment and licensing of patents and know-how. Protecting your rights in any intellectual property you own and ensuring you maximise your income from your dealings with such rights is of vital importance to your business. We can help you to ensure that you retain ownership of any intellectual property developed under an IT project (whether by you or any third party you are working with). 
• regulatory compliance including data protection and security. Breaches of data protection and/or security regulations can result in substantial fines for your business so it is important that these subjects are dealt with in the right way under any outsourcing contract you may have. 
• re-negotiations, amendments to, and terminations of, existing contracts. We appreciate that if you already have a satisfactory contract in place you will not want to “reinvent the wheel” every time an IT project is renegotiated or changed. We work with our clients to identify and understand the changes which are critical to your relationships and business, make the appropriate amendments to your existing contract to reflect these changes whilst, at the same time, retaining as much of the original wording as possible so as to ensure minimal disruption to our clients’ business processes. 
• the commercial and legal issues clients should consider when deciding whether or not to grant a license of their software to other parties, and how it can address these issues in a subsequent license agreement.
• e-commerce, media and internet-based services
• software licensing issues and disputes such as counterfeit software problems (in relation to which we have wide-ranging experience)

Our cases

• technology disputes; for example, we have recently:
• acted for an international software supplier in a $50m software development contract dispute with three state-owned African banks in an ICC arbitration, in which we achieved a successful outcome; and
• acted in High Court proceedings against an international IT services business, settling after trial but before judgment
  
  
• website design and domain name disputes; in the case of Atos IT Services UK Limited v Above.com Domain Privacy / Nish Patel we were able to successfully secure a decision to transfer the domain name of a website to our client (WIPO, 2013)

If you need legal advice from our technology lawyers in relation to outsourcing or technology project then please contact us.