Civil Law

A New Era for Consumer Protection: The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act

An overhaul of the UK consumer law landscape is on the horizon, with the consumer law provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 set to take effect on 6 April 2025.

By Fiona Maclean, David Little, Irina Vasile, and Sean Newhouse

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) represents a significant shift in the UK’s consumer protection regime. By introducing new enforcement powers and substantive obligations on top of a foundation of restated law, the … Read the rest

Civil Law

Treasury is consulting on a proposed new competition regime to apply to digital platforms

New competition framework for digital platforms

6 min read


The Federal Government has released a proposal paper for consultation on the framework for a new digital competition regime, which aims to promote competition by addressing anti-competitive conduct, unfair treatment of business users and barriers to entry and expansion that prevent effective competition in digital platform markets.

The regime outlined in the proposal is broadly similar to the framework recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in … Read the rest

Circuit Courts

Librarians Trade Books for Databases in the Digital Age

While the landscape of court libraries has changed as new information technologies have reduced the need for books, court librarians still play a critical role in providing judges, law clerks and other Judiciary staff with legal resources used to support decision-making. This month, courts are marking the 75th anniversary of the creation of the circuit librarian position, a role that today makes possible a wide variety of services in the digital age.
Judiciary News – United States Courts… Read the rest

Civil Law

Shameless Plug: Reed Smith team authors product liability chapter for digital health law guide

As our loyal readers know, the blog has been keeping a close eye on plaintiffs’ efforts to apply product liability law to software . This is of course an area of keen interest to medical device, software, and tech companies active or entering the digital health space.

The blog’s own Eric Alexander, with Reed Smith co-authors Gerry Stegmaier, Jamie Lanphear, and Michael Rubayo, has now written a very thorough chapter on this subject for the International Comparative Legal Guides’ fourth … Read the rest

Civil Law

Guest blog: California expands scope of Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, strengthening protections for mental health information exchanged through digital health applications

By: Andrew Serwin, Kristi Kung, Bethany J. Hills, Christine Lentz

With the mounting mental health crisis intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, the telemental health industry has exploded in recent years. According to recent estimates, as many as 325,000 health and wellness apps are available for download, and 10,000-20,000 apps have been designed specifically for mental health. Many of these programs require clients to record their symptoms, which has led to reports of privacy concerns, because these companies may profit from … Read the rest