At the end of January MacRoberts IPTC Partners, Val Surgenor and David Flint were invited to speak at the Annual Cyberspace Institute and Winter Working Meeting of the American Bar Association Business Law Section Cyberspace Committee. The Meeting brings together leading Cyberspace lawyers in a two day working meeting on issues of cutting edge technology. This year's meeting (in a very wet and windy Fort Lauderdale) was attended by over 70 lawyers from the US and Canada – and 2 lawyers from Europe).

With the great interest in Privacy, data Protection and Data Transfers following the CJEU Decision at the end of last year (covered in an e-Update), the North American lawyers were keen to hear from Val and David on what was being done to replace Safe Harbor and why it was not as simple as they thought. This presentation was complicated by the fact that it was only 2 days before the supposed deadline for the new system and the position was changing constantly.

With the possible introduction of Privacy Shield, the North American interest remains high.

Also at the meeting, there were presentations on Regulation of Cyber Currency by the Draftsman of the proposed new law, on Identity Management and on Financial Services Regulation as well as on more routine contractual law issues.

The publication which Val is Co-editing and co-authoring on Social Media Law and the publication which David is co-authoring on Cybersecurity Issues in M&A Transactions were also discussed with both titles expected later in 2016.

It is clear that the work MacRoberts is doing in this area is very highly regarded by our ABA colleagues and we remain the only Scottish (and almost the only non-US) lawyers involved in this event.