In its judgment of 28 May 2026 (Case No. 26 O 869/26), the Munich Regional Court I held that Google may be held liable for infringements arising from AI-generated overviews displayed above search results under the heading “AI Overview.” This article summarises the court’s decision and examines the legal issues it raises, as well as its potential implications for AI-powered search services.

The Machinery Regulation and the Cyber Resilience Act establish abstract cybersecurity requirements whose practical implementation depends on harmonised standards. This contribution examines the legal effect of such standards and the presumption of conformity they provide, illustrating—through the examples of prEN 50742, IEC 62443, and EN 18031—how standardisation serves as the technical bridge between the two regulatory frameworks. The article focuses in particular on the current standardisation gap: the machinery-specific standard on protection against corruption and tampering remains at the draft stage, and delays in its finalisation may result in the absence of the presumption of conformity when the two legal instruments begin to apply.

Artificial intelligence has long since become an integral part of legal work across law firms, courts, public authorities, and in-house legal departments. The extent of this transformation was explored at the 12th Weblaw Forum LegalTech, held on 17 June 2026 at KINOKONI in Zurich under the theme «AI for Legal Practice & Digital Sovereignty in Times of Global Upheaval». The programme ranged from data protection law and the use of AI at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to digital sovereignty in data infrastructure and practical applications in legal departments and law firms. The inaugural “AI Legal Research Challenge” ultimately demonstrated just how advanced legal research tools have become.

Immer mehr Unternehmen und Behörden möchten KI-Anwendungen in ihre Dienstleistungen und Prozesse integrieren. Sei dies zur Bereitstellung von Chat-Bots, zur Übersetzung, Zusammenfassung oder Umformulierung von Texten, zur Erstellung diverser Arbeitsergebnisse oder zur Automatisierung von Entscheidungsprozessen. Unternehmen und Behörden müssen bei der Einführung von KI-Anwendungen jedoch stets eine Reihe von datenschutzrechtlichen Anforderungen beachten. Diese sind für Private und für Behörden unterschiedlich. Die Unterschiede wurden im Referat anhand von konkreten Beispielen aus der Praxis vermittelt. Die Teilnehmenden erfuhren dadurch, welche datenschutzrechtlichen Vorgaben und Abläufe sie je nach Einsatzgebiet einer KI-Anwendung beachten müssen.

Digitale Souveränität wird häufig im Kontext von Plattformen, Daten oder Künstlicher Intelligenz diskutiert. Weniger Beachtung findet jedoch die zugrunde liegende Infrastruktur: die Systeme, die Informationen überhaupt erst auffindbar und nutzbar machen. Der Vortrag griff diese Perspektive auf und stellte das Projekt «Open Web Index -OWI» als mögliche fehlende Ebene im europäischen Digitalökosystem vor. Ausgangspunkt war die These: Wer einen Index kontrolliert, bestimmt langfristig auch die Bedingungen für Suchmaschinen, KI-Systeme und datengetriebene Innovation. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird analysiert, wie sich der OWI in bestehende und neue europäische Rechtsrahmen, insbesondere im Bereich Datenschutz, Plattformregulierung und KI, einordnet und welche rechtlichen Herausforderungen und Gestaltungsspielräume sich daraus für die Digitale Souveränität Europas ergeben.

Status quo, Use Cases und Grenzen von KI in der Rechtsabteilung von SWISS – und wie souverän die Fluggesellschaft zwischen US‑, EU‑ und Schweizer‑Anbietern navigiert.

In der Anwaltschaft wird Künstliche Intelligenz oft als Effizienztreiber und Risiko für «Billable Hour» verstanden. Die Technologie eröffnet jedoch auch neue Wertschöpfungspotentiale. Sven Kohlmeier erläuterte aus seiner Praxis, wo KI «fliegt», welche technischen, rechtlichen und tatsächlichen Schwierigkeiten es gibt und wo er die zukünftige anwaltliche Wertschöpfung sieht.

Wie sieht die Kanzlei aus, wenn Tastatur und Bildschirm in den Hintergrund treten und die Stimme zur wichtigsten Schnittstelle wird? Romain de Wolff zeigte es nicht auf Folien – er führte es live auf der Bühne vor: mit echtem Sessel, einer Tasse Kaffee und seiner Stimme als wichtigstem Werkzeug. Selbst diesen Vortrag hielt er nicht über die Tastatur, sondern im Gespräch mit dem Rechner – und Whisperit schrieb mit. Mithilfe von Whisperit, dem Schweizer AI-Workspace für Jurist*innen, demonstrierte er an konkreten Anwendungsfällen aus dem juristischen Alltag, wie sich Mandate eröffnen, Schriftsätze diktieren, Akten analysieren und Recherchen durchführen lassen – ganz entspannt, allein per Sprache. Vom Diktat zum fertig formatierten Dokument, vom PDF-Wust zur strukturierten Falldarstellung: eine Live-Demo, die zeigte, wie nahe die juristische Arbeitsumgebung von morgen bereits ist.

Digitale IDs sind die Grundvoraussetzung für moderne Verwaltungsprozesse. Trotz eIDAS und der Neufassung eIDAS 2.0 gibt es weiterhin rechtliche Unklarheiten in der technischen Spezifizierung. Die vorliegende Analyse ordnet das europäische Identitätsökosystem in fünf Technologietypen. Es zeigt auf, dass fast alle einschlägigen hardwarebasierten Systeme hohe Datenschutzanforderungen erfüllen, während z.B. bestimmte Formen der Implementierung verteilter Systeme im Widerspruch mit Prinzipien der DSGVO stehen (können). Die regulatorische Lücke liegt dabei weniger im rechtlichen Rahmen, sondern ist letztlich eine Folge fehlender konkreter technischer Spezifikationen und Prüfverfahren. Die EUDI Wallet stellt eine Verbindung zwischen etablierten Vertrauensdiensten und nutzerkontrollierten Nachweisen her, die den schrittweisen Übergang zu einer europäischen, interoperablen Identitätsinfrastruktur einleitet. Es bestehen wesentliche offene technische und organisatorische Fragen. Als Lösung werden zwei Ansätze vorgestellt: erstens die rasche Konkretisierung durch Implementing Acts und Common Specifications, sowie ein EU-Test- und Zertifizierungszentrum; zweitens die adaptive Anpassung der Regulierungen via Pilotprojekte und Sandboxes. Solche strategischen Anpassungen werden offene Spezifikationen und Standardisierungen innerhalb der europäischen Zertifizierungsstrukturen schließen und helfen somit die digitale ID Souveränität Europas konkret zu stärken.

Regulating and enforcing compliance on online platforms under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) is a paradigmatic “wicked problem.” This article argues that complexity is not a defect to be engineered away but a structural condition of the DSA’s socio-technical and socio-legal governance. We synthesize doctrinal analysis with a systems view of content moderation to show how overlapping legal norms, heterogeneous national definitions of “illegal content,” fragmented reporting artefacts (Articles 15, 17, 34, 37), and hybrid human–AI moderation generate persistent ambiguity for platforms, regulators, auditors, and users. Using reporting mechanisms as the empirical interface between law and infrastructure, we outline how transparency reports, the EU Transparency Database, systemic risk assessments, and independent audits translate practice into compliance claims, while also producing contradictions that challenge legal certainty and auditability at scale. Reframing complexity as a design condition, we propose five interlocking requirements for governing through complexity: (1) consistency analysis across reporting artefacts; (2) improved, mixed-method methodologies for systemic risk assessment; (3) independent usability audits of user reporting (Article 16); (4) AI support that scaffolds rather than substitutes human judgment, with bias, error, and contestability testing; and (5) collaborative, human-in-the-loop audit protocols (Articles 34, 37). Understanding how the DSA’s layered obligations operate in practice is crucial, as compliance now structures much of Europe’s digital public sphere. We discuss implications for law, computer science, HCI, and regulatory practice. The contribution is a conceptual and methodological blueprint that treats the DSA as a system-of-systems: one that can transform complexity into accountable, reproducible, and enforceable governance rather than attempting to eliminate it.

Social media platforms increasingly shape public opinion and elections through opaque algorithms. The Digital Services Act (DSA) regulates content moderation under Article 14(4), requiring platforms to respect users' fundamental rights in terms and conditions enforcement, extending to the new DSA bodies as well. The Meta’s Oversight Board exemplifies this by applying ICCPR and UNGP standards in its three-step test. This paper (1) shows how the Oversight Board applies fundamental rights in its decisions, and (2) assesses whether the new DSA system can follow its example.

Online manipulation has gained increasing attention alongside digitalization and data-driven technologies. Practices such as targeted advertising and deceptive interface design demonstrate how consumer influence has evolved in the digital environment. Despite this, manipulation remains conceptually underdeveloped in both legal scholarship and legislation, with unclear boundaries or definition. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the first EU legal framework to explicitly reference manipulation in digital markets, though without providing a normative definition. Instead, it implicitly identifies certain practices as manipulative, including personalised advertising and dark patterns. This article conceptualizes consumer manipulation in the digital context, proposes criteria for distinguishing it from related concepts, and evaluates the extent to which the DSA addresses manipulation within EU consumer law.

Cloud service providers increasingly integrate automated and AI-driven moderation systems into their infrastructures to identify illegal or policy-infringing content. Although these systems are vital to contemporary digital governance, their deployment introduces substantial risks, particularly in the form of erroneous or disproportionate content removal. Users may find their files deleted, their accounts suspended, or their access restricted without receiving a meaningful explanation or an adequate opportunity to contest such actions. This article examines the liability of cloud service providers for wrongful data deletion under two complementary frameworks: the Digital Services Act, which introduces procedural and diligence-based obligations enforceable through Article 54, and the revised Product Liability Directive, which extends strict liability to defective software and cloud-based services and recognises the destruction or corruption of non-professional data as compensable harm. The analysis demonstrates that these regimes operate cumulatively and cannot be contractually waived, notwithstanding widespread attempts by providers to exclude or limit liability. The article argues that the convergence of the DSA and PLD fundamentally reshapes the legal landscape governing cloud services and imposes a heightened standard of care appropriate for a digital environment increasingly shaped by algorithmic decision-making.

Platform gaming introduces a novel legal terrain shaped by user-generated content and community-driven norm creation. This paper explores how gaming communities not only produce content but also construct social and ethical norms that influence platform governance. Drawing on Weinberger’s and MacCormick’s institutional theory, it argues that platform rules function as institutional facts, enabling providers to perform legally significant acts via code. Community practices, such as reporting, modding, and norm negotiation, serve as inputs that shape these norms and contest the sovereign power of the provider. The analysis reveals how participatory rule design emerges from the interplay between formal platform authority and distributed user activity, challenging traditional models of digital sovereignty.

Terms of Service are created by lawyers to define a contract’s provisions and resolve disputes. However, this does not meet the expectations of Internet users who want to quickly learn the conditions for the use of a service. Applying user-centered design and visual law techniques can adapt the presentation to the users’ expectations. Usability testing of the redesigned Facebook Terms of Service showed that its comprehensibility was significantly improved compared with the original documents. We argue that Terms of Service should be provided in two formats: one that is easy to understand for service users and another that presents the legal provisions for lawyers.

This article examines whether the training of generative AI models on copyrighted works can constitute an act of unfair competition under the forthcoming Slovak Civil Code. It argues that while the text and data mining (TDM) exceptions under the DSM Directive generally legalize AI training on lawfully accessed data, they do not fully resolve issues arising from the use of unlawful data. The paper distinguishes between lawful access (the user’s right to reach the dataset) and legal data (the lawful origin of the material), showing how this gap may enable residual application of unfair competition law. Using analytical framework, it concludes that unfair competition claims should normally fail where TDM exceptions apply, but may succeed where AI developers exploit illegal datasets or where AI-generated outputs directly compete with human creators. In such cases, unfair competition law acts as a corrective mechanism preserving fairness and market integrity beyond the scope of copyright.

Die Ökodesign-Verordnung (ÖNP-VO) stellt das wichtigste Regulierungsinstrument im Rahmen des European Green Deals dar. Ziel ist es, die sog. Kreislaufwirtschaft in der Union und damit allgemein die Nachhaltigkeit der europäischen Wirtschaft zu fördern. Dabei sollen Produkte möglichst langlebig bzw. auf Wiederverwendung und Reparatur ausgelegt sein. Um einschlägige Daten verfügbar zu machen – und als Marktüberwachungsmechanismus – wird in der ÖNP-VO zudem der sog. digitale Produktpass (DPP) eingeführt. Der vorliegende Beitrag diskutiert den in der ÖNP-VO eingeführten Reparaturbegriff bzw. die damit verbundenen Anforderungen insbesondere im Hinblick auf Auswirkungen auf den DPP.

Eine Auszeichnung von Treibstoffpreisen auf einer für alle per Internet zugänglichen Preistransparenzdatenbank dient der besseren Orientierung für Auto- und Motorradfahrer und der Verbesserung der Vergleichbarkeit der Preise. Durch die Transparenz wird ein verstärkter Wettbewerb zwischen den Anbietern beabsichtigt. In Österreich wurde durch BGBl. I Nr. 54/2011 die gesetzliche Grundlage für eine solche Preistransparenzdatenbank geschaffen. Die E-Control hat die Preistransparenzdatenbank nach den Vorgaben des Bundesministers für Wirtschaft, Energie und Tourismus zu betreiben und im Internet zu veröffentlichen. Eine entsprechende Preistransparenzverordnung Treibstoffpreise hat der Bundesminister mit BGBl. II Nr. 246/2011 erlassen. Die Verordnung hat ein zeitliches Ablaufdatum, welches jedoch immer wieder nach hinten verschoben wird, zuletzt Ende Dezember 2025 mit BGBl. II Nr. 320/2025. Der Frage, ob die Preistransparenzdatenbank und deren Abfragemöglichkeit in Österreich zu einem stärkeren Wettbewerb zwischen den Anbietern und damit zu einer Senkung des Preisniveaus geführt hat, wird in der Literatur bezweifelt.

The growth of online advertising has profoundly transformed the media economy and has altered the conditions under which profits may be assessed within the meaning of Article 28a(3) of the Swiss Civil Code. Profit, consisting of the advertising revenues generated by a media content, now depends on a complex set of technical mechanisms originating from marketing sciences and computer science. The economic value of an online media content no longer results solely from the advertisements displayed on its own page, but also from its ability to capture the user’s attention and subsequently direct that attention towards other content that is likewise monetised by the media outlet. This reality, which is characteristic of the digital attention economy, remains largely absent from legal scholarship. This article proposes a rigorous method, consistent with Swiss case law, for calculating the profit resulting from an unlawful interference with personality rights committed through media in the digital environment. The study distinguishes between direct revenues, determined by the pricing model used for the sale of advertising spaces, and derived revenues, consisting of the advertising revenues generated on the media outlet’s website or application through the internal traffic initiated by the media content. By articulating the requirements of personality rights with the functioning of the digital economy, this contribution provides a comprehensive framework for identifying and assessing the advertising revenues generated by online media outlets in the context of an action for an account of profits.

Ausgehend von einem kürzlich erstinstanzlich entschiedenen Fall (des LG Berlin II vom 20.08.2025, 2 O 202/24), geht der Beitrag der Frage nach, ob und wie die menschliche Stimme gegen Imitation geschützt ist. Dabei stellen sich neben urheber- und datenschutzrechtlichen vor allem auch persönlichkeitsrechtliche Herausforderungen, zumal in Zeiten der KI-generierten Sounddateien die Ge- und Missbrauchsszenarien scheinbar uferlos zunehmen.

While the eligibility-criterion for the Copyright protection has been harmonized through ECJ jurisprudence, and the interpretation of the concept of ‘substantial’ within the sui-generis protection under EU Database Directive 1996 – though seemingly clarified for the ‘eligibility criteria’ – remains doctrinally problematic regarding ‘scope’ and ‘renewal’ of protection. The ECJ has tied the concept `of ‘substantiality’ for determining the scope of protection to the ‚investment’ made to obtain the database right, therefore conflating the conceptually different standards of ‘eligibility’ and ‘scope’. While seemingly pragmatic, this conflation creates conceptual and practical inconsistencies. Such reasoning risks collapsing the distinction between investment-based eligibility and content-based use, undermining the Directive’s internal coherence. A more coherent approach would be to assess ‘substantiality’ of a part by reference to its capability to affect the normal exploitation of the database or prejudice to the legitimate interests of the database maker (as reflected in chapter III), while treating the ‘investment’ factor as an indicative factor. Moreover, the notion of ‘substantial change’ under Article 10(3) also warrants scholarly attention. Hence, this paper argues that the Directive‘s use of ‘substantially’ across three distinct legal contexts i.e. (i) substantial investment (eligibility), (ii) substantial part (scope/infringement), and (iii) substantial change (renewal) – requires its own interpretative criteria, rather than a unified, investment-based standard.

The rapid pace of AI development has made it necessary to revisit some of the fundamental principles in the trademark law. This paper critically discusses the extent to which AI tools can meaningfully assist the EUIPO in the trademark application process from three specific research questions: To what extent do current AI tools used in EU trademark registration reflect legally relevant similarity assessments? Can AI meaningfully support the evaluation of inherent distinctiveness under Article 7 EUTMR? What are the limits of deploying AI in the assessment of likelihood of confusion under Article 8(1)(b) EUTMR, particularly from the perspective of the average consumer? The paper contends that use of AI must remain firmly circumscribed by established doctrinal criteria and human legal assessment.

Originality represents a fundamental criterion of copyright protection and reflects distinct legal traditions. Whereas common law systems traditionally emphasize labour and skill, continental approaches underline the personal relationship between the author and the work. French copyright law illustrates a progressive reconciliation of subjective and objective conceptions of originality, culminating in an understanding grounded in the author’s free and creative choices. At the European Union level, this notion has been harmonized through the concept of the author’s own intellectual creation, developed in the case law of the Court of Justice (hereinafter “the Court”). The resulting EU standard demonstrates an autonomous yet dialogical approach, drawing on national traditions while establishing a harmonized framework that may also guide the assessment of originality in works created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.