Linklaters

Our global TMT group provides practical and pragmatic legal advice throughout the full lifecycle of technology contracts. Customers, suppliers, private companies and governments benefit from the team’s experience of technology contracts, from tendering, structuring and transition to contract management and exit.

Our team’s strength is advising on complex, multi-jurisdictional projects. Clients can rely on lawyers with expertise in all types of technology contracts, including hardware and software supply, design, build and operate, turnkey, O&M, systems integration and outsourcing and offshoring contracts.

In addition to technology contracts, our global TMT team also includes a number of ebusiness specialists with expertise both in this field and IT security.  These specialists play a part in lobbying for, and developing, workable ebusiness legislation and regulation in various jurisdictions around the world.

Recent IT and technology experience include advising:

• BP on its £1.5 billion IT outsourcing transaction with five major IT suppliers
• a consortium of investment banks on two procurements enabling the creation of the Turquoise trading platform, a low-cost trading platform which was set up to rival Europe’s established exchanges
• British Gas on its £220 million claim for breach of contract by Accenture of the terms of its design, build and maintenance agreement of an IT system
• EDF Energy on the procurement of a new SAP based billing system from Accenture
• Unisys in a dispute with the Belgian Ministry of Justice concerning the computerisation of the Belgian court system, after the ministry terminated the software agreement it held with Unisys
• PwC on all of the technology separation issues, more than 50 separate contractual arrangements in all, arising from the insolvency of Lehman Brothers in the UK
• the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) on the early ending of its contract with ETS Europe for the provision of national curriculum test operations
• on proceedings issued by Centrica against Accenture for a £128 million contract dispute claim
• a global travel distribution company on use of commercial data-scraping technology without consent of website owners in a large number of European jurisdictions
• a leading global manufacturer on a multi-jurisdictional review of e-ordering and e‑invoicing requirements
• a number of major banks on their wealth management online services including all aspects of e-business and financial services regulation
• a Middle East sovereign wealth fund on the drafting of its e-trading arrangements with the LSE and its brokers