An information technology lawyer can assist with all elements of the the law related to information technology including security and intellectual property. The scope of information technology law is now incredibly broad as there is now such a wide range of information technology which is available and which there are systems of regulation that apply to the operation of computers. In Australia, for instance, the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth) allows for the replacement of a written signature with other forms of electronic communication, at least for the purpose of a law of the commonwealth. It also means that a person making an electronic communication can not be taken to have not made a transaction simply because they claimed that it was done electronically.

Other elements of the law which have expanded recently are the laws relating to intellectual property, particularly the copyrighting of software products and the intellectual property in relation to patents and inventions of IT hardware and certain software products such as programming languages and even search engine algorithms such as those used by Google. There is also an entirely new body of law which has emerged around domain name registration which is regulated by ICANN, an international non-government organisation which has its headquarters in silicon valley in California in the United States. When the IT industry was extremely new and was not sufficiently understood by regulators and lawyers and judges, there was a paucity of regulation and arguably there were things that happened that certainly would not be allowed to happen in the present industries because of the increasing level of regulation. This is both a source of comfort and concern for information technology firms because regulation tends to stifle innovation and productivity but it also prevents computer cowboys from doing whatever they want and getting away with daylight robbery on the information superhighways of the world. If you have an inquiry about information technology law, please do not hesitate to contact us using the contact form available on this site.