Last week, I attended the bi-annual IFCLA (International Federation of Computer Law Associations) conference, “IT Law – The Global Future, Achievements, Plans and Ambitions” in Amsterdam.

The program [pdf] included such interesting speakers as Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor; Cleary Gottlieb’s Maurits Dolmans (whom I used to work with (for) in Brussels); and Professor Michael D. Scott of Southwestern Law School.

Below, a few highlights of what was discussed during the two-day program. (For sake of brevity, I have not mentioned all the excellent speakers that shared their insights and knowledge; see the full program otherwise. I’ve also split this post in two, as it runs too long otherwise: Thursday sessions this week, Friday session next week.)

Day One, Thursday morning: David Bender & Peter Hustinx on Privacy

David Bender, with White & Case in New York, shared the findings of a quantitative study [pdf] of the Ponemon Institute that his firm had sponsored. According to the report’s findings, as relayed by Mr. Bender, U.S. companies ensure a higher level of privacy for their customers or employees. To me this was surprising; surely the EU-based national rules are much more stringent?

There is a quote of Mr. Bender in White & Case’s press release for the report that sums up the reasons why the study found that U.S. firms achieve a higher level of protection:

European companies are much more likely to have privacy practices that restrict or limit the sharing of customer or employees’ sensitive personal information and are also more likely to provide employees with choice or consent on how information is used or shared, but the research also revealed that US companies are engaging in more security and control-oriented compliance activities [emp. added, ed.] than their European counterparts. As a result, US corporations scored higher in five of the eight areas of corporate privacy practice.

The next speaker, Mr. Peter Hustinx (the European Data Protection Supervisor) responded briefly in his talk to Mr. Bender’s findings; stating that European privacy law is built on the premise of a “conservation of safeguards” (Well, that’s my paraphrasing, Mr. Hustinx did not literally say it like that.)

Mr. Hustinx continued by providing a quick rundown of how his office was involved in supporting the European Parliament in its succesful appeal to the ECJ (European Court of Justice) for annulment of the agreement between the EU and the United States for the sharing of passenger data (so called PNR: Passenger Name Records). This is the first time that his new office joined a case before the ECJ. (In its decisions, the ECJ annulled – on technical grounds – the adequacy finding of the [European] Commission, and the agreement of the Council; see Joined Cases C-317/04 and C-318/04 here.)

Finally, before the break, Mr. Hustinx shared with those present that the [European] Commission would publish an evaluation paper of the Personal Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) this year. The spoiler: no changes to policy or the law are expected. (A Commission paper on the related eCommunication Directive will be presented this July.)

Day One, Thursday afternoon: Outsourcing

The afternoon session included a presentation from Robert Zahler and Trevor Nagel of the DC office of Pillsbury Winthrop on recent developments in global outsourcing. They presented an interesting visualization tool (well, grid actually, they call it a mosaic) mapping existing IT processes in a corporation; with color-coding showing who is responsible for what. How I understood their explanation is that they have 79 fixed steps to describe the entire process, and that’s it. I imagine it helps greatly, but can also imagine that it would fail at exactly the same point as the more linear, text-based contracts: the vague description of a discrete element in the information processing structure. Except, this time you’re trying to fit an element into one of the 79 boxes, which then doens’t exactly fit. So, it’s the same problem, but you might have actually hid it by using the pre-defined steps, until it becomes a problem.

Stephen Matthias of the Bangalore Office of Kocchar & Co continued the session on outsourcing by highlighting a few advanced Indian-law specific issues relating to outsourcing to India: most notably a priority-issue for software patent filings, the need to exercise (work) assigned rights to keep the assignment valid and the end of a tax-holiday for local outsourcing firms in 2009 and the likely results of that (possibly an increase in price, or a move of the firms themselves to special economic zones; SEZ).

Next week: Public Procurement, Hybrid Open Source, FRAND Licensing and Web 2.0 Licensing

Thanks for sticking around until the end of the post. Next week, more on Friday’s sessions: Public Procurement (Pekka Takki of Fennica in Helsinki and Steven De Schrijver of Van Bael & Bellis in Brussels), Hybrid Open Source (Ian Kyer of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin in Toronot), FRAND Licensing (Maurits Dolmans of Cleary Gottlieb in Brussels) and Web 2.0 Licensing (Prof. Michael D. Scott of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles).

Did I enjoy it? Yes I did!

So, until next week, but let me already give you my own concluding remarks ^^. Scanning the program, I found the topics disparate and wasn’t sure what to expect. Having actually participated in the conference, I once again realized that, diverse as these topics might be, most IT and IP law lawyers actively practice in one or more of these area’s, and that most of the issues and challenges are indeed often global in nature. Also, they all share the common denominator of being related to technology, law and culture. or maybe that’s just me :)

(A 160-page book with papers was published with Elsevier for the conference, but I can’t find a place to buy it online. If you want to get your hands on a copy, e-mail me.)

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[This is a post from Technology Law Culture: http://tlc.oosterbaan.net/. Olivier Oosterbaan, ICT and media lawyer in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, maintains this blog.]

(Picture by: me, some rights reserved.)