After introducing the employment status of Uber drivers as pivotal issue for technology based challenges to established business models (I.), the article first provides the necessary background on London transport regulation and general information about the service provide by Uber (II.). Drawing heavily on the reasoning of the Employment Tribunal in Aslam, Farrar and Others vs. Uber, the main part is dedicated to answering the question whether Uber drivers in London are employees or independent contractors (III.) to which a few observations are added (IV.).

After introducing the unfortunate dilemma between clarity and flexibility for any privacy legislator (I.), the article briefly reviews privacy safeguard requirements in the United Kingdom under the Data Protection Act 1998, in the U.S. under the Federal Trade Commission Act and in Australia under the Privacy Act 1988 and compares these international requirements against Canada’s privacy safeguard requirements under PIPEDA  (II.). The main body outlines how the joint report on the investigation of Avid Life Media Inc. of 22 August 2016 by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Australian Privacy Commissioner and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on "reasonable and appropriate" data security practices as set out in LabMD, Inc. v Federal Trade Commission have further advanced the understanding of what measures are expected to be implemented by an organization in order to substantiate that the organization has implemented an appropriate and reasonable security standard to protect personal data (III.).

The assignment of external IT personnel and IT Service Providers is about to experience new challenges. The German government had made the announcement to reinforce the fight against hidden temporary agency work under the disguise of purported work contracts (“fictitious contracts to produce a work"). They have initiated inter alia a legislative reform of the German Act on Temporary Agency Work (Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz – AÜG) regulating temporary agency work. On 1 June 2016, the Federal Cabinet passed the draft law on temporary agency work and work contracts. The German Parliament discussed the draft law in the fall and decided that the law shall enter into force on 1 April 2017. This article first explores the most important changes to the assignment of external IT personnel employed in Germany from a labour law perspective (I. and II.), followed by an analysis of the draft law’s impacts on the different assignment models including recommended actions (III.). The second part of the article focuses on the impacts of the AÜG-Reform on the content of IT-Contracts by pointing out how established and commonly used clauses in IT-Contracts need to be amended to achieve compliance with the new legislative requirements of the AÜG (IV.).

Laws on trade secret protection are becoming more similar and harmonized within and between the United States and the European Union based on new legislation enacted on both sides of the Atlantic this year. Companies can now find increasingly similar requirements for the protection of technical know-how and other confidential information. Businesses should revisit and upgrade their information management and protection programs to secure rights and avoid liability relating to confidential information. They should consider information security measures that are favored also by data protection laws and summarized in this article.