newtech.law - legal aspects of new technologies

This time we address solutions from the front lines: devices for remote diagnostics which can improve effective detection of the coronavirus and also unburden the health service in other areas. These solutions can also serve as a proving ground for the regulatory approach to oversight of algorithms.

The immediate inspiration for writing this text was a solution from the company StethoMe presented at the DemoDay organised by the MIT Enterprise Forum CEE. It is a wireless stethoscope combined with an application allowing respiratory examination at a distance. The system also enables analysis of the collected data using an artificial intelligence algorithm. StethoMe is currently testing the possibility of using a remote stethoscope to examine symptoms caused by the coronavirus. Remote diagnostics could greatly improve the effectiveness and safety of our fight against the virus.

We could bet with great odds that one of the effects of the pandemic will be an increased interest in remote diagnostics solutions in the near future. Thus we should point to some of the special regulatory challenges these solutions will necessarily entail.

The battle with the coronavirus is dynamically entering another phase.
After the initial shock, we are realising that technology may have a crucial
impact on the rate of return to a somewhat more normal life. This doesn’t mean
just biotech. Solutions keeping the virus under relative control until effective
vaccines reach the market can prove just as important.

With this article, we would like to launch a series of publications on the legal aspects of solutions for supporting the battle with the coronavirus. These solutions are extremely interesting from the conceptual and technological perspective, but also entail numerous legal issues.

Key strategic documents from the European Commission on data and AI—the European data strategy and Excellence and trust in artificial intelligence—were recently released for public consultation. They present a European vision for a new model of the economy.

According to these documents, the new model of the economy is to be founded on principles vital for European values, particularly human dignity and trust. This aspect should be stressed, as the European Union clearly is becoming the global leader in thinking about new technologies in light of humanistic values. This is a unique approach, but also entails several dilemmas. In adopting this approach, the EU risks eroding its competitive advantages, at least in the short-term perspective. Most likely, AI technologies will develop faster in places where their growth is not restrained by ethical doubts. The Commission thus proposes an ambitious but also risky approach.

Does a company or limited partnership have to
have its own website? Does it have to operate the site itself? What information
must be posted there? Practical pointers under the amended Commercial Companies
Code

An amendment to the Commercial Companies Code entered into force at the start of 2020, imposing on joint-stock companies and joint-stock limited partnerships an obligation to operate a website and to post certain information there for stockholders (as we previously reported here).

Although
the new regulation applies to all joint-stock companies, in practice it changes
little for public companies, which were already subject to much more extensive
requirements, and thus we do not discuss public companies further in this
article.

The new regulation should be examined more closely, as it has generated (probably unintentionally) certain doubts as to what the new obligation entails.

The Polish edition of the Global Legal Hackathon will be held this year on 6–8 March in Warsaw. Once again our blog will serve as a media patron for the global efforts of legal tech aficionados. Wardyński & Partners is also a patron of the event.

Across all fields of life we witness groundbreaking changes brought by new technologies. Progressive digitalisation is not sparing the financial markets, which are indeed perceived as an area that will be shifted almost entirely into the digital world. The goods traded on financial markets rarely take material form, but are typically some type of abstract right.

The basic and most obvious challenge for digitalisation of financial markets is to eliminate paper where entries in IT systems prove to work better. Traditionally and historically, securities have taken paper form, but that clearly does not meet the requirements of contemporary trading on financial markets studded with state-of-the-art technologies.