If you were to hunt for a New Zealand-written text on “technology law”, chances are you wouldn’t find one. It is, however, a discrete area of practice and one that far transcends what some would call the law of the internet, or internet law. It covers the intersection between law, technology and (in many cases) public policy, in all its guises, including the delivery of telecommunication services, off-the-shelf software licensing, framework licensing, bespoke software development, online authentication and personal attribute verification, outsourced IT service provision and management, cloud computing and in that context infrastructure-, platform- and software-as-a-service, security requirements and systems, web development, social media and the law, collective and collaborative IT purchasing, and issues confronting tech-related start-ups.
We believe that the practice of technology law requires:
- a solid understanding of relevant areas of law and practice, from procurement to contract drafting and negotiation, copyright to company formation, privacy to public policy;
- a solid grasp of, and experience with, relevant technologies, from telco services to the web, authentication to identity verification, firewalls to social media; and
- in contractual settings, a practical approach to negotiating preferred outcomes that recognises commercially viable allocations of risk and the importance of relationship and governance.
Members of Interwoven Law have deep and wide-ranging experience and expertise in all these areas, with all practitioners in this practice area having worked in-house and externally and for both public and private sector clients.