This article highlights the key challenges of data protection in the context of the Internet of Things and the EU General Data Protection Regulation. In particular the processing information to which data subjects have a right are addressed and the actors that play a key role in the IoT value chain are introduced. As a potential solution the article advocates for technological measures to resolve the underlying data protection issues in form of industry standards.

Network-compatible everyday tools are expatiating and thus rising the question of how cybersecurity can be guaranteed with those tools. One instrument is state regulation. In the article, the current legal framework will be analyzed. A need for action and innovation will be located especially for international standards and for the area of product safety and liability law. (ah)

As of April 2018, eCall systems have become mandatory in most passenger vehicles manufactured and sold in Europe. Whilst this comes with a number of practical advantages, a number of privacy concerns have been raised regarding the technology. This article seeks to investigate some of the issues highlighted in order to address whether they pose a risk as significant as they are perceived to pose.

In the Internet of Things, traditional contractural principles can be reasonably applied in general. Practical difficulties are less due to the principally operational «legal institutes» but rather to the frequently given complexity of contractual relationships in a multi party network. (ah)

In the digital age, the importance of ownership is on the decline and that of access rights and similar concepts is steadily on the rise. Nevertheless, connected devices, such as «smart» cars or machines, continue to be distributed on the basis of sales contracts. The buyer of a connected device only gains ownership of the tangible substance, though, which is largely worthless without further product components such as embedded software, ancillay software, software updates and a variety of digital services. The author analyzes whether connectedness of devices leads to an erosion of the concept of ownership.

The article evaluates possible liability constellations from the patients’ point of view that could be relevant for them when using the Electronic Patient Record (EPR). The authors first offer a summary of the EPR and its implementation, as well as the involved individuals and institutions, before analysing potential events of damage and specific legal relations in detail. They conclude that the existing liability standards provide at least conceptually sufficient balancing rules for events of damage and that no additional legislative provisions are required. (ah)

The Federal Act on the Electronic Patient Record came into force on 15 April 2017. This law not only contains several specifications on processing and on the objectives, but also includes a penal provision on unauthorised access to the Electronic Patient Record (EPR). Additionally, the miscellaneous criminal offences of the Penal Code are applicable; they are outlined and associated with the EPR in this article. It becomes clear that cybercrime does not spare the EPR. The protection of health data must be of utmost priority, if the EPR is expected to obtain approval in the general public and if the willingness to use it shall be encouraged. (ah)

Data protection and data security are decisive factors for the acceptance of eHealth solutions. This also applies to the introduction of the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in Switzerland. The author examines the legal framework for data breach notification obligations of actors involved in the EPR system. He advocates harmonization of the data protection laws of the Confederation and the Cantons with regard to notification and investigation obligations. Further, he stresses the importance of cooperation between the competent supervisory authorities with regards to notices of data security incidents concerning the EPR.

The first so-called «digital pill» has been approved in the USA in November 2017. Both the medical chances of the digital pill and the accompanying legal risks for the patients' (fundamental) rights in Switzerland are subsequently discussed in an initial overview. (ah)

Instead of leaving the evaluation of health technologies to the EU Member States, the EU commission wants to gradually carry them out itself. Those compulsory assessments cover all pharmaceuticals as well as specific classes of medicinal products, including in-vitro diagnostics. (ah)

The parliamentary fractions oppose to the EU proposal for a Regulation on Health Technology Assessment and amending Directive 2011/24/EU. (ah)

The main association of the Austrian social insurance agencies and the Austrian medical association will jointly implement a number of e-services within the next years. The objective is to disburden patients, doctors and social insurances from administrative processes. (ah)

In its meeting of 31 January 2018, the Federal Council amended the Regulation on the Electronic Patient Record. The changes pertain to the accreditation of certification authorities as well as to a technical condition on how data on health professionals has to be registered in the query service. (ah)

On 31 January 2018, the Commission has put forward a proposal to boost cooperation amongst EU Member States for assessing health technology. Greater transparency will empower patients, by ensuring their access to information on the added clinical value of new technology that could potentially benefit them.

Both in politics and science, the establishment of «data ownership» is postulated increasingly. The fact that various norms already convey property-alike legal positions is hereby overlooked. Additionally, a convincing theoretical justification for «data ownership» is lacking, and its absence does not cause insurmountable practical problems. On the contrary, the introduction of «data ownership» would lead to numerous consequential problems within its design and implementation. (ah)

The provisions on the protection of trade secrets are an integral part of Swiss law; transactions regarding trade secrets (e.g. licensing) are of considerable economic importance. But is data protection law in the position to become the core legal framework underlying the data driven economy? The article sketches the current legal regime, measures its efficiency against the case of «connected mobility», flags problems becoming apparent from this «field test», discusses whether the current legislation contributes anything to solving them, and concludes with two conceivable scenarios for the future of data protection law in a data driven economy. (ah)

A data owner’s factual control of certain data can have negative effects on third parties. From their point of view – be it individuals, affected businesses or even the society as a whole – the question arises whether they should, under certain circumstances, have a legal right to access factually protected data. This article illustrates when access to data becomes an issue and briefly outlines new data access rights that could be used as remedies. (ah)

The article contains some thoughts on the legal environment of so-called Web Scraping. Aspects of copyright, unfair competition law, data protection and contract law are discussed. (ah)

The amount of data is blowing up. Until 2025, 160 zettabytes of data will presumably be generated. Data is becoming more valuable and, at the same time, vital. Data protection and security are further gaining in importance. As data is predominantly saved in companies, the imbalance between data producer and consumer further increases. Hence, there are growing calls for autonomy. The article illustrates what is understood by PIMS/PDS, examines the Swiss and European legal situation and shows inadequacies of PIMS/PDS concepts. (ah)

The article deals with the legal scope of the loss of data, its legal classification and the relating practical problems. Different types of data loss are constituted by means of various scenarios. The author concludes that, although legal protection instruments exist for most scenarios, the enforcement might prove difficult in particular cases. Additionally, the question arises whether protection should be enhanced, this notably related to the loss without third party influence and for the case of third party’s usage and exploitation of lost data. (ah)

Cloud providers, hosters of online stores and other business partners offer storing services for companies and private individuals that substantially simplify the access and editing of data saved online. The unpleasant surprise, however, can apply when such service partners go bankrupt: the Swiss bankruptcy law does not include a data owner’s right to access or claim digital data that is saved on data mediums of insolvent businesses. The author analyses the issue and demonstrates solution approaches for facing the challenges in practice. (ah)

Digital legacy has to be understood as a specific partial aspect of the current discourse on the legal classification and assignment of digital data. The article first gives an overview on the Swiss legal situation de lege lata and, subsequently, shows the inadequacies of the existing regulatory framework in relation to digital successions. Following, a summary of the present judical practice is imparted and future national and international solution approaches for the handling of a person's «digital shadow» are discussed. (ah)

The aim of this study is to discuss some controversial decisions made by the Brazilian Courts of first instance that allowed the WhatsApp application to be temporarily blocked in Brazilian territory. The judges focus their attention on the definition of end-to-end encryption and seem to not consider adequately the collision between two fundamental rights: privacy and security. We will criticize their approach and will highlight what the real risks are for the fundamental rights when we consider the possibility of a pluralist democracy in the Internet dimension.

The present research aimed to evaluate the interoperability of the Brazilian Electronic Judicial Process (EJP) through parameters selected by a survey answered in a personal interview with TIC's staff at Brazilian Courts. The concept of interoperability adopted in the research was a broad concept, defined as the ability of the user to operate a system for all the purposes he needs. The interoperability of the EJP is defined herein as the capacity of the system to respond to usability demands of a user. The report is available at http://www.ejustica.ufpr.br/index.php/publicacoes/.

The modernization of the judicial branch through electronic and computer routines intends that the various participants in the process use different computer resources – such as the Internet – to convey the necessary information and to make the resolution of controversies easier with greater speed and efficiency. However, failures in the accomplishment of the electronic court record surface and bring severe consequences when dealing with criminal cases, since fundamental rights are discussed. Considering the development level of e-government, the paper will present a diagnosis of the current implementation of the electronic court record in the Peruvian criminal procedure, underlining its main benefits and difficulties.

In the article, some of the results of the project «A legal study on the generalization and translation of Creative Commons (CC) Version 4 licenses in French in the context of Francophone Africa» are being evaluated.

The Electronic Government is an application field for ontologies, which play a key role in the development of the Semantic Web. Consequently if we focus on the law and the public policy that base the governments and build a dialect ontology that encompasses the electronic government needs of services at the front-office with a delimited scope on the Mexican Ethnics Groups, we will provide a starting point to enable a broad class of semantic electronic government applications. In this paper we show the e-Government Dialect Ontology in order to access documentation throughout Government Portals.

In June 2017, at ICAIL2017, the 2nd Multilingual Workshop on AI & Law Research (MWAIL2017) took place. With eight presentations in four languages, mostly in English, the intension to reach out to non-English speaking communities worldwide, in particular Spanish and Portuguese, was well achieved, and relevant, otherwise not noticed research could be presented to an international audience.

This paper introduces an infrastructure for the analysis of legal metadata and textual data on international investment and trade disputes. The developed database architecture consists of three main components: (1) a WebCrawler of two key web sites for international economic law dispute information; (2) a document analyzer to transform PDFs into text files, identifying structure and footnotes within document, finding references to other disputes and storing texts as XML; and (3) multiple user interfaces to allow different user types to access the data. The architecture allows users to launch metadata queries and/or to investigate textual corpora. It therefore provides a versatile new framework for international economic law research from various angles and disciplines.

A model for a three-level communication of law is presented consisting of textual, visual and logic-ontological representation. Whereas much practice exists in publication in text, more research is required to refine the idea of a broader and more diversified publication. Costs and benefits have to be properly evaluated in the future, based on further projects. Experimental implementations have shown advantages of more appropriate representation but also higher costs. Stakeholders of legal information have to discuss ways of sharing this burden, appropriate to expected significant gains for legal practice.

The paper presents the main problems related to lawyers’ due diligence in the context of the legal search in the Swiss judicial decisions. It starts with a brief discussion of the general problem of information overload, and then delves into two specific problems related to the leading cases of the Swiss federal courts and to the uncertainty about the binding force of the decisions of the Swiss cantonal courts. The paper moves on to the solutions, describing the general conditions for a high quality legal search in the Swiss case law databases and proposing two particular improvements (automatic recognition of similar decisions and automatic links between decisions from the same case).

This paper describes the pilot project on Linked Open Data (LOD) and e-Participation, promoted by the European Parliament and developed by the Publications Office of the European Union (OP). By exploiting the LOD service for pre-legislative documents available at OP, the project aims at allowing citizens to actively participate in public consultations within the EU decision-making process, by providing comments and amendments on pre-legislative documents, as well expressing their sentiments on them. The data produced will be available as LOD; for this reason a specific semantic approach able to describe documents and users activities is implemented.

This paper proposes an extensible model distinguishing between four different reference types within legal documents: fully-explicit, semi-explicit, implicit, and tacit references. Based on the German laws we conducted a case study to evaluate the model and proposed differentiation. The evaluation shows that the consideration of additional reference types heavily impacts the resulting network. This work argues for the necessity of detailed differentiation between references throughout and within legal documents.

In December 2016, the 2nd Workshop on Legal Data Analysis (LDA2016) of the Central European Institute of Legal Informatics (CEILI) took place in conjunction with the JURIX2016 Conference in Antibes. Seven papers were accepted for presentation and publication with a strong focus on tools for representation, analysis and reasoning with legal data in information systems.

Digital natives have arrived in the world of employment. Their smartphone is their most valuable possession. It is communication tool, wallet, shopping center, knowledge data base and toy – all in one. Their usage behaviour is an expression of their personality and without their smartphones, they are lost. It is understood, that digital natives will use their smartphones on the job, too. Employers will have to arrange with it. They would be well advised to not only do so from a defense attitude, but actively. Otherwise, they will bear the risks without benefiting from the chances. (ah)

Mobile devices are truly ubiquitous in our private and our professional lives. They provide location-independent access to applications and data, significant processing, and storage capacity, as well as a variety of data-producing sensors, cameras etc. As these devices are attractive targets for a wide range of attackers, their operational use should be preceded by a proper risk analysis and the subsequent definition and implementation of suitable security measures. Without these steps, information security will be blindfolded.

Lawyers are classified as rather conservative when talking about the use of IT. On the occasion of its 125th jubilee, the Bernese Bar Association (BAV) is looking both back and into the future. Within the framework of the Webinar «Keller oder Wolke? Digitales Arbeiten in der Anwaltskanzlei», Fritz Rothenbühler and Wolfgang Straub are, together with Simone Kaiser, discussing how small and large law offices can find the best strategy for deploying IT. (ah)

Digitization is extremely fashionable and revolutionizes entire industries. Do lawyers have to dread a business model à la Uber? Or may LegalTech even offer new opportunities for lawyers? Will the future lie in fully digitalized law firms or merely in online legal services? With the foundation of his law firm Jusonline AG in the beginning of 2016, the author has taken the first step into the digital legal world. He now reports on his first experiences, on the technical possibilities that are very far from being exhausted and on the limits of digitization in the legal profession. (ah)

On 30 March 2017, the Bern Bar Association – as the very first bar association in Switzerland – has organized a webinar. The issues at stake were questions around the usage of information technology in law firms. The webinar has been initiated and moderated by Simone Kaiser and Fritz Rothenbühler, president of the Bern Bar Association. In the article, important subjects from the discussion with Wolfgang Straub are reviewed in written form and complemented with further bibliographic references. However, the style of interview has been maintained. Additionally, a checklist for cloud contracts in law firms is attached. (ah)

Digitization will not stop at law firms’ gates and will fundamentally shape the nature of legal counselling as well as client relationship.

The author offers a short introduction to the speech that will be hold at the Weblaw Forum LegalTech on 29 June 2017 in Zurich. She deals with innovative business models and demonstrates how lawyers can engage the opportunities of digitization for their own purposes. (ah)

The author offers a short introduction to the speech that will be hold at the Weblaw Forum LegalTech on 29 June 2017 in Zurich. He deals with the changes in professional life coming along with LegalTech and asks, how artificial intelligence and self-learning algorithms will shape the occupational routine. (ah)

Not only large consulting firms can benefit from the legal market’s digitization. The digitalization particularly offers opportunities for small and medium-sized law firms, tax consultancy and trustee's offices by automating routine processes and distinguishing themselves with real expert knowledge, personality and customer proximity. The lawyer & tax expert 4.0 is not a machine equipped with artificial intelligence, but a modern consultant who understands to use the interplay of digitization and personification in a targeted and profitable manner. (ah)

Judicial independence is one of the central design principles of the judicial system. The concept of «Bring Your Own Device» (BYOD), meaning the use of private mobile devices for business purposes, is only one of the new development trends in the digitally minded working world. The possibility to work anywhere and anytime complies with the judges' self-conception. Is BYOD for judges a future-oriented model or does it involve severe technical and data protection-related security risks? (ah)

Using electronic communication is indispensable in our daily life, and in law firms, too. Its current forms though may endanger the attorney’s duty of confidentiality. Although secure encryption solutions have existed for decades, attorney and client normally communicate via e-mail, in plain language. From technical and legal points of view, the talk analyses the state of art of client communication, discusses solutions and presents a system for end-to-end-encrypted communication that does without technical arrangements on the client’s side. (ah)

In this speech, e-justice in Russia is depicted using the example of the «Agentur Rosreestr». This federal organ with executive force is responsible for any cadastres and real estate-matters in Russia. The agency has an online presence that shows up their complete range of services and provides declaration as to how such services can be occupied. To determine the usability of «Agentur Rosreestr.»’s website, a transfer of ownership is used as an example. This will be explored on the basis of Layne and Lee’s (2001) proposed development trajectory for e-government. (ah)

The world is going through a real decentralizing, disruptive revolution not only of economic activities, but also of social interrelations and political aspects of life, of which most of us are not aware. Organized by the Center for Intellectual Property and Innovation Law of the University of Neuchâtel (Pôle de propriété intellectuelle et de l’innovation, [PI]2, www.unine.ch/pi2) on 4 October 2016, this seminar on «Fintech, Bitcoins, Blockchains, Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs): the future is bright, the future is decentralized» was the first of its kind to handle the legal aspects of blockchains in Switzerland in such a detailed manner, profiling the Neuchâtel region, which counts a rising number of dynamic startups in the field, as a player to count with in blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Moderated by Daniel Kraus, ordinary Professor of innovation law and Director of the [PI]2, this first seminar allowed participants to have fair exchanges of ideas on the subject, to realize what opportunities and perspectives blockchains open, what risks are entailed, and discuss the present and future legal framework for blockchains.

Bitcoin can be viewed as the starting point for all reflections on crypto-currencies and blockchain. However, most of the concepts and notions can also be applied to other blockchains, like Ethereum for instance, which is a decentralized platform for running applications such as smart contracts, or to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Vincent Mignon provides a general introduction to the subject and explains the basic notions of blockchain, wallet, public keys / private keys, miners, etc. A particular emphasis is placed in the first part on Bitcoin, in the second part on Ethereum and in the third and final part on decentralized autonomous organizations.

This talk explores how DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) will look like in the future, through the example of the first iteration of «The DAO». This new form of organisation comes with a new type of governance and enables different interactions between the members of the community. It also brings new challenges and forces us to rethink some of our traditional legal concepts.

According to https://blockchain.info/, as of 10 January 2017, the total market value of mined bitcoins (crypto-currency based on blockchain, a decentralized technology) was USD 14'668'273'764. The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a kind of venture capital fund entering into so-called smart contracts (automatically executed contracts in a blockchain), was launched on 30 April 2016; as of 21 May 2016, the total value of invested ethers (another crypto-currency) was more than USD 150 million, from more than 11,000 investors. Amounts at stake invested in crypto-currencies are gigantic, so are the number of owners, and respectively the number of investors. The aim of the presentation is to assess whether the owners of crypto-currencies and the people investing crypto-currencies in DAOs based on blockchain technology are sufficiently protected by Swiss Law and if there is a need for further protection.

Blaise Carron presents the contractual aspects of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) which manage them as investment communities and as enterprises. In his lecture, he first adresses the questions regarding jurisdication and applicable law for internal or external litigation concerning DAOs. Then, he discusses the internal legal relationships of the DAO as well as the areas of responsiblities that each member of the DAO is accountable for. Lastly, he covers the external relationships between the DAO and its contracting parties.

Despite its practical importance, the taxation of cryptocurrencies and DAOs is not governed by any specific legal provision or administrative practice in Switzerland. Therefore, Professor Thierry Obrist recommends in his presentation to rely on general principles governing Swiss tax law in order to determine the way investors, both legal persons and individuals, are treated for Swiss taxation purposes. In this regard, Thierry Obrist differentiates between investments in virtual currencies and in DAOs but also deals with the taxation of DAOs themselves, including some very practical issues regarding VAT.

As law is a hierarchically arranged system of norms, it has to be systematical and can not only be limited to network structures. Nevertheless, the legal network discussion recalls that it is a system that does not follow the way of Prokrustes but is flexible and connects formal unity with dynamic content. The occurrence of spontaneous legal norms and regulations, the fragmentations of individual and society as well as legal pluralism can be picked up by systematic thinking. The term «network» is not yet elaborated enough for this. (ah)

Starting with an introduction of teaching in general and Napoleontic teaching in particular, the referee then elaborates media panic and alarm reading. He talks about the cases of Apple and Microsoft regarding data protection and law lagging behind technological developments. Additionally, the speaker deals with the unpredictability of applicable law, courts, treaties and community and explains why regulatory approaches should no longer be command control interventions but be inclusive and foresee as good as possible the relationships already in place (responsiveness).

The potential of AI & law methods in law has been not properly used. A promising way out may be legal data analysis. The goal of legal data science is to complement the existing methodology of law with the new computer-based methods, and to bring it into a theoretical framework. In previous research, we have developed the 8 views/4 methods/4 syntheses approach of legal data analysis. In the speech, we will focus on the man/machine delivery of the desired products of legal knowledge representation using AI & law methods. At present, a lot of this analysis is done manually but the lack of sufficient resources becomes more and more evident. So far, tools of data analysis are insufficiently developed and used in the legal domain. This speech should describe the potential of this approach in order to motivate a stronger deployment in the analysis of legal text corpora.

The analysis of legal data using information technology, more specifically text and data mining algorithms, has become very attractive in the field of legal informatics. Additionally, legal science and practice consist of data-, knowledge-, and time-intensive tasks, which have always been in the focus of legal informatics. This paper contributes a data science environment, which is in particular suited for legal texts, e.g. documents from legislation and jurisdiction but also contracts and patents. The environment consists of a reference architecture and a specific data model. Furthermore, it integrates an easily adaptable and extendable text mining engine allowing reuse of components. The base line architecture for the text mining engine is the Apache UIMA. The environment enables to collaboratively specify linguistic and semantic structures. Thereby, it uses an existing rule-based script language, namely Apache Ruta. This paper shows how the system can be used to unveil legal definitions in the German Civil Code (BGB) by not only finding them but also by determining which legal term is defined and how. This functionality enables the structuring of unstructured information, i.e., text, which enables data scientists and legal experts to semantically investigate and explore legal texts.

To offer their users selective information acquisition is one of the major challenges for legal databases. Even against the backdrop of developments within web search, relevancy sorting has established itself as one of the most popular but at the same time most complex and controversial measure in the field. In this speech, the core thesis of the speaker’s dissertation is being elucidated, namely that subject-specific relevancy sorting should be used by legal databases to successfully serving their users information requirements in the future. (ah)

The online commentary on the Constitution of the Principality of Liechtenstein, published by the Liechtenstein-Institut, is the first comprehensive scientific commentary of Liechtenstein. Used within is a custom development based on MediaWiki. The utilisation is open to anybody. The individual commentaries’ linking to all documents freely accessible in the internet (i.e. laws, judgements, materials, and opinions) is of particular note. This allows a deeper insight into Liechtensteins constitutional law, even for persons with no legal skills. (ah)

Major gaps may exist between the legal representation of an agreement («the paper deal») and the goals and intentions of its negotiators («the real deal»). This paper outlines contracting pitfalls and proposes new approaches to the use of visualisation to overcome them. We categorise contract visualisation and introduce comics and visual interfaces for deal-making as examples of two new categories. These approaches open new possibilities for the future for both theory and practice. They also contribute to next generation deal design as a way to narrow the gaps between the real deal and the paper deal, turning contracts into user-friendly communication tools that reflect the true will of the parties.

Financial regulation and investment products have become more and more complex. Information disclosures tend to be off-puttingly long and densely texted documents. Investor behavior studies indicate that investors often skip and skim information – and even worse, sometimes they do not read it at all. Investors’ abilities to comprehend and use financial information give no reason to cheer, either. Fortunately, we have tools to overcome complexity. Building on our previous work where we have applied simplification and visualization to improve the communication of contracts, this paper explores the use of these approaches to financial communication.

The cooperation visualization, in the intersector-specific comparison, is rated differently by the involved enterprises in cooperation networks. Therefor, different visualization approaches and techniques play major roles in the considered sectors machine and plant engineering, facility management and public administration in the Federal Republic of Germany. Amongst these sectors, differences as well as similarities regarding cooperation visualization are recognizable. Set against this backdrop, three sector-specific case studies are created and evaluated.

First, they were observed in fascination, and then demonised. In time, lawyers have just accepted Bitcoins & Co having found its way from the «dark area» of the Internet to the spotlight of «hot stuff». The lecture deals with the path taken, the international legal regulation attempts and the still prevailing opinion of it being a real currency. In addition to a fresh attempt of legally classifying this currency, fiscal handling as well as legal protection of the consumer are shortly touched upon. (ah)

Due to the advancing development of technical possibilities in relation to contracts and the consequences resulting for the – in some respects «dusty» – civil rights, the legal perspective needs to develop respectively. Legal considerations of automated contract conclusions are being discussed using practical examples. The basis is formed by computer-assisted contract conclusion. Subsequently, the applicability of insights to automated conclusions of contracts shall be executed. Liability and access of the declaration of intent as well as the faulty contract conclusion and electronic signatures of contracts are the key issues. (ah)

The European Commission, on 9 December 2015, promulgated two new draft directives and one new proposed regulation. The lecture deals with the draft directive on certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of digital content. It is intended that this directive supplements existing instruments like the Consumer Rights Directive. However, the introduced proposal that shall have a fully harmonized effect, too, is primarily involved with problems that occur as a result of missing contract conformity of digital content. On the one hand, the proposal should be presented in an overview, on the other hand, some central aspects and problems shall be made subject of discussion. (ah)

The legal publication culture is marked by a strong change; besides real-time availability a focus on a «virtual discussion process» is another characteristic. The document types are becoming more and more diverse. It requires consideration of bibliographic information, metadata, authority labelling of the author, the temporal context and the citation network in order to achieve a user-oriented sorting of results of a legal retrieval system, focussed on a particular legal question. This speech presents a theoretical model that will be implemented in the future, also by integrating existing instruments.

In this talk, the author will describe in detail how a legal Information service provider has set up a process to create legal thesauri in order to support digital services like JURION. In Addition, maintenance issues and the Connection to other thesauri and knowledge bases like EUROVOC or DBpedia are mentioned. Finally, some use cases of thesaurus usage in applications are described on an exemplary basis.

More than 3'000 international investment agreements (IIAs) have been concluded by 2015 and virtually every country is a signatory. What makes these treaties special is their enforcement mechanism: private investors can sue states directly before international arbitration potentially winning multi-million dollar awards. Given its size and atomized nature, however, practitioners struggle to effectively navigate the IIA universe. To reduce investment law's complexity, this paper introduces a range of computational approaches relying on state-of-the-art technology. Implemented as a web-based tool, these approaches allow researchers, policy makers and litigators to assess similarities and differences between agreements quickly and intuitively helping them to navigate the investment treaty universe.

The Weblaw Search Technology (WST; Weblaw AG) uses several legal thesauri. One is the «Jurivoc thesaurus» of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. This contains about 9’000 descriptors and about 18’000 non-descriptors and is used mostly for indexing of cases. Other Swiss courts use their own thesauri, if any. Jurivoc is monohierarchical and three-lingual and contains at least partly direct translations of the descriptors. We have also added an English translation within the frame of WST. The best results are achieved with a combination of different types of indexing: legal descriptors from the thesaurus and legislation citations (extended by numerous other legal citations). After the transformation and the preparation of an indexed document, the keywords (descriptors) are applied to it following a complex set of rules depending on the use case and the context. Direct matches, grammatical forms as well as parts of compound words are all taken into account when assigning descriptors (and synonyms) to a document. The integration of further data sources and cross connections is to be seen as a development scenario. (ah)

According to German law, the creation of pseudonymous profiles by using websites is feasible if a right of objection is granted to the persons concerned. An explicit authorisation is required only if personalised profiles or profiles beyond online use are created. All online and offline activities of their customers can be merged by companies when those specifications are fulfilled; such data can theoretically even be used for the personalization of offers and prizes. (ah)

Participation in virtual online environments has for many people become a central aspect of their lives. As the distinction between digital and off-screen lives becomes increasingly blurred, and gamification introduces gaming aspects into social interactions far away from recreational gaming, questions of personal identity acquire new meaning. But how can we in law make sense of attributes that people acquire in a game environment? Are they potentially sensitive personal information, or are they of no relevance to the outside world? We look at two aspects of online games in particular, in-world religion and in-world political affiliation, to explore this issue.

Times of change in music industry: music publisher EMI Production Music has recently announced an «amnesty» for using musical samples. Furthermore, the (in)famous «Metall auf Metall» lawsuit seems to enter the next round as well: this time, the subject matter is the musician's artistic freedom. Both developments have been taken as an incentive to critically on the common practice of sound sampling. Is the above mentioned «amnesty» promising? And what is the opinion of the German Constitutional Court?

The Council of Europe 2004 Recommendation on e-voting (Rec(2004)11) is a soft law instrument containing legal, operational and technical standards for e-voting. An ad-hoc Committee of Experts on E-voting (CAHVE) started work on its update in 2015. This paper focuses on the place of Rec(2004)11 in the regulatory framework for e-voting as well as on issues related to its update. We discuss the main results of the first phase of the update and some specific legal questions related to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in elections. The main challenge for such an instrument is to fully and correctly translate broader principles of the European Electoral Heritage into standards and requirements for e-voting that remain pertinent as technology evolves.

Following 15 experimental years of continentally induced legislation regarding electronic signatures and identification devices, in 2014 the EU has made a new attempt: experience with not interoperable installations, denouements as well as the increase of legal relevant e-communication and safety requirements open out into a new EU regulation. This provides new terminologies for the semantic field «Identity and Signature». Simultaneously, a liability multi-stage-system is made available, up until government liability for officially notified authentication systems. (ah)

The eIDAS Regulation with its overall seven implementing acts agreed upon so far is on the cusp of being applied throughout Europe. With this, one significant «key enabler» for the Digital Single Market will be available, making the cross-border electronic communication and transaction legally safer and, with this, contributing substantially to the acceptance of legally relevant e-communication. In time, the national legislative implementation and support measures complementing the eIDAS Regulation are being elaborated. Given that broad sections of the Regulation will be applied from 1 July 2016 (namely those regarding trust services) and the Signatures Directive will be repealed from this date, more extensive intrastate legal measures are imminent. The speech ought to offer a current overview of the eIDAS Regulation and its immediate effects, and to provide an outlook of the future intrastate legal measures at the end of February 2016. (ah)

Big Data is about deriving new information from existing data – information that allows to create markets or rather control them and to steer policy. Switzerland – similar to the EU – is five to ten years behind the United States regarding Big Data technology and practical big data applications. This creates dependencies. With the National Research Program Big Data, impact-orientated research ought to be strengthened in Switzerland. One of three program modules, that one dealing with social issues – from the fields of ethics, politics and law amongst others – is presented in the lecture. (ah)

After a nearly four-year legislative process a political consensus has been achieved in December 2015 on the new EU General Data Protection Regulation between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. Important improvements: strengthening data subjects' rights, right to be forgotten, right to data portability, simpler access to information, and a data breach notification. Data protection authorities will be strengthened. Violations of data protection law can be punished with high administrative fees. The General Data Protection Regulation shall enter into force in 2018.

The concepts of «Privacy by Design» and «by Default» have gained importance over the last years since it was recognized that solely formal legal regulations are not able to secure data protection. This assessment is now also reflected in the General Data Protection Regulation; several provisions enable technical engineering in compliance with data protection rules. For the first time, providers of products and services are legally requested to take data protection concerns into consideration in the IT development phase. This procedure should solve the currently existing issues of the technical implementation of normative data protection requirements. However, the success of these regulations will be vitally dependent on the cooperation of market-dominant IT-companies and the introduction of technical standards.

The article highlights selected characteristics of consent according to the final draft of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) dated December 15th, 2016. In particular, the aspects of a «clear affirmative action» as well as the «freely given» consent are being analysed and compared to Swiss laws.

The consent is the foundation to the probably most frequent case of processing of personal data in practice. This is reflected not only in the right to concealment in basic data protection rights, but also serves as a protection of children against discriminatory legal transaction, especially in distance sellings. By the imminent decree of an European General Data Protection Regulation, many of the current issues regarding delimination and differentiation of approval according to civil and data protection law could have been solved. The fact is, that this has not been done, in reality even more questions have occured. The article shows the current complex of problems and provides an insight into the impacts of the – after an agreement in trilog procedure has occured – soon to be implemented regulation.

Performed by Weblaw AG, on 2 November 2015, the first Webinar@Weblaw took place on the topic of «The Safe Harbour Decision of the ECJ». The respective podcasts are available here. (ah)

By the year 2011, the Austrian lawyer and data protection activist Max Schrems has been initiating proceedings against Facebook for the enforcement of the current data protection law. Walter Hötzendorfer first exemplifies the lawsuit in Ireland and additionally approaches the independent civil action of Schrems versus Facebook in Austria. Afterwards, he elucidates Safe Harbour and shows the repercussions of the revelations made by Edward Snowden regarding the world wide mass surveillances by western secret services. These disclosures have induced Max Schrems to institute another case against Facebook in Ireland, which ultimately resulted in the Safe Harbour decision of the ECJ. (ah)

With its Judgement in the case of Maximilian Schrems vs. Data Protection Commissioner of 6 October 2015, the European Court of Justice put an abrupt end to the current version of the Safe Harbour-Program arranged between the EU and the USA. Primarily, the judgement constitutes a political appeal to the USA to develop the data accesses by US secret services that were revealed by Edward Snowden in a way that is compliant with fundamental rights. The justification chosen by the ECJ to substantiate its appeal contains some explosive points. Consequently, the judgement equals playing with fire. (ah)

The decision of the ECJ, in which it undermined the basis for «Safe Harbour» in transmitting data from the EU to the US, still generates a lot of attention. In the market, complete uncertainty as to what is to be done now predominates. This is in no small part due to the contribution of data protection authorities in Europe, whether it is with contradictory statements, ambiguous expressions or sudden activism and overreactions. The position statements of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner («FDPIC») also caused confusion and incomprehension. What is to be applied and what are the next steps? The speech gives answers and practical recommendations. (ah)

With the annulation of the Safe Harbour decision, the data transmission between the EU and the USA requires a new legal framework. The time limit for its implementation set by the EU Commission and the Article-29-Group ends on 31 January 2016. From the legal point of view, standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules, fulfillment of contract, essential public interests, vital interests of the concerned parties and approval are under consideration; the respective advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, the problem of nearly unrestricted data access in purpose of fighting crime, averting danger and for the national security can not be solved. (ah)

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) connected the Safe Harbour Agreement to the basic rights, but did not provide much clarity about how the protection of privacy emanates to the applicable cross-border regulations in practice. The judgement follows previous data privacy strengthening rulings and shows (again) that the ECJ does consider concerns of legal policy, as it did before about basic economic freedoms. (ah)

Warum müssen wir Juristen unsere Arbeitsweise eigentlich überdenken? Und werden die Veränderungswilligen belohnt werden? Lohnt es sich rasch zu handeln oder werden die Ersten die Letzten sein? Der Vortrag adressiert diese Fragen am Beispiel des Rechtsdienstes der Novartis.

LegalTech ist für manche ein Buzzword, für andere die Digitalisierung des Rechtsmarkts. In welchen Bereichen ist LegalTech erfolgreich und wo hakt es noch? Ein kleiner Faktencheck.

Oft sollen auf der Blockchain Rechtspositionen in Form von Tokens verwaltet werden. Doch sind die Abbildung von Rechten und deren Übertragung über die Blockchain mit rechtlichen Unsicherheiten behaftet. Dasselbe gilt für den Abschluss formbedürftiger Verträge. Die qualifizierte elektronische Signatur, die über einen smart contract in die Blockchain eingebunden wird, vermag die erforderliche Rechtssicherheit zu gewährleisten. Der Überblick über die aktuelle und künftige Rechtslage behandelt auch die geplante Regulierung der elektronischen Identifizierungsdienste (E-ID-Gesetz).

Wie speichert man Daten in der Blockchain? Philip Hanke zeigt, wie man mit nur drei Klicks den Fingerabdruck eines Dokuments in der Blockchain abspeichert, um eindeutig sowie unfälschbar nachzuweisen, dass dieses Dokument in exakt dieser Form zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkt existiert hat.

Im Herst 2018 entstand die Idee einer Blockchain für Uhren. Nach anfänglichen Zweifeln konnte diese im Rahmen der schweizweit ersten LegalTech-Veranstaltung an der Universität St. Gallen (HSG) präsentiert werden. Daraus entwickelte sich kursüberdauernd das Start-up WatchChain.

Im Rahmen des Referats wird das Konzept sowie die techn. Umsetzung aufgezeigt. Demonstriert wird kurz die Entwicklung des Projekts und der Einsatz diverser Softwareapplikationen sowie die Herausforderungen bei der Umsetzung. Stichworte sind: Chatbot, Machine Learning, Natural Language Understanding/Prozessing (NLU/NLP), LegalAI, Dialogflow etc.

Zwei wesentliche Ziele verbergen sich hinter dem andauernden LegalTech Hype. Erstens: Arbeitsprozesse sollen einfacher werden. Zweitens: Arbeit soll skalierbar werden. Doch die echte Disruption bleibt aus. Was wir suchen, sind Moonshots. Doch dass Moonshots aus Kanzleien launchen, ist eigentlich ausgeschlossen. Kaum eine Kanzlei ist ein Cape Canavaral. Zu wenige Pioniere und Abenteurer tummeln sich hier. Viel eher finden sich hier die Schaulustigen, die darauf warten, dass etwas passiert. Wir zeigen Ihnen eine Möglichkeit, um am nächsten Moonshot zu basteln und wie ein konkretes Umfeld für die ersten Schritte aussieht. Konkret: Wie funktioniert kollaborative Dokumentenautomation zwischen Anwalt und Mandant?

Obwohl Swisscom Legal die meisten Service-Verträge automatisch generiert, werden weitergehende Vereinbarungen (wie Absichtserklärungen, Vorleistungsverträge etc.) manuell auf der Grundlage von Word-Templates erstellt. Dieser Prozess ist jedoch ressourcenintensiv und fehleranfällig. Daher arbeitet Swisscom an einem Proof of Concept mit dem Ziel, diesen Prozess zu vereinfachen und so gleichzeitig Ressourcen einzusparen sowie die Qualität deutlich zu verbessern. Neu werden diese Verträge mit der Dokumentenautomatisierung DocEngine am Browser erstellt. Jede Information wird nur einmal erfasst und zum Teil aus Vorsystemen übernommen. Die Erprobungsphase wird zeigen, welche Einsparungen und Verbesserungen in der Praxis erzielt werden können.

Bei der Dokumentautomatisierung können Nutzerinnen und Nutzer viele Fehler machen. Benötigt wird ein Umdenken, weg vom einzelnen Dokument hin zu Prozessen und Geschäften. Bereits zu Beginn ist zu fragen, welche Informationen und Antworten relevant sind, um die gewünschten Enddokumente zu erstellen. Verwendet man Variablen und möchte man möglichst Skaleneffekte erzielen, lohnt es sich über einheitliche Regeln für einen Dokumentenkorpus nachzudenken. Wichtig ist von den bereits gemachten Erfahrungen zu profitieren. Dokumentautomatisierung ist ein Bereich im Rahmen jeder Digitalisierungsstrategie. Die Automatismen müssen zur Arbeitsweise passen und sich in die Prozesse und IT-Landschaft einpassen.

Digitalisierung heisst die neue Weltordnung. So ist auch das juristische Wissen vermehrt nur digital verfügbar: E-Books, E-Mails, E-Akten, gescannte Post, abgespeicherte Notizen, digitale Geschäftsverwaltung… Die Vielfalt der Informationsquellen ist gross, aber umso grösser ist auch die Komplexität. Die Informationen sind zwar da, sind aber heterogen, verstreut und bei Bedarf schlecht auffindbar. Die Gründe sind verschieden und reichen von historisch gewachsenen separaten Dateninseln, über inkompatible Systeme bis hin zum Arbeitskollegen, der die internen Dateien immer wieder heimlich verschiebt. Die interne juristische Suchmaschine Lawsearch Enterprise schafft einen «Single Point of Search» über alle Datenquellen eines Unternehmens. Mittels Schnittstellen können bekannte DMS Systeme wie z.B. iManage eingebunden werden. Alle Informationen sind in einem Suchfenster verfügbar. So steht das ganze Wissen jedem Mitarbeitenden immer zur Verfügung. Die zeitaufwändige Suche entfällt: dank der Lawsearch Suchmaschine können pro Tag bis zu 30 Min. Arbeitszeit gespart werden. Bei rund 250 Arbeitstagen pro Jahr sind das 125 Stunden mehr für intellektuelle Arbeit und Billable Hours.

Authentische Videos in Stellenanzeigen eignen sich sehr gut, um die Arbeitsplatzkultur eines Unternehmens zu vermitteln. Differenzieren Sie sich von der Konkurrenz und finden Sie so die richtigen Kandidaten.