top of page

Vol.12 Issue 1 (2016)

The Internet of Citizens: A Lawyer’s view on some Technological Developments in the United Kingdom and India

Guido Noto La Diega

This article aspires to constitute a useful tool for both Asian and European readers as regards some of the state-of-the-art technologies revolving around the Internet of Things (‘IoT’) and their intersection with cloud computing (the Clouds of Things, ‘CoT’) in both the continents. The main emerging legal issues will be presented, with a focus on intellectual property, consumer protection, and privacy. The cases chosen are from India and the United Kingdom, two countries that are conspicuously active on this front.
I will give an account only of (what I consider to be) the highlights of the IoT in India and the United Kingdom. With respect to India, the selected speculative prism is composed of net neutrality, smart cities, manufacturing, computer-related inventions, and a recent bill on the surveillance aspects of the world’s largest biometric database. In turn, I will look at the British context by analysing some (quasi) regulatory acts with a focus on privacy and consumer protection.

Author

Associate Lecturer in Law, Leader for Intellectual Property Law at the Buckinghamshire New University; President of ‘Ital-IoT’; cultore della materia of intellectual property and private law at the University of Palermo (on leave). I am profoundly grateful to Ms. Ipshita Bhuwania, who skilfully assisted me during the research necessary for this work. This would not have been possible without the research previously undertaken at the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre. The responsibility for this article and the errors therein are, however, solely mine. Any kind of feedback is welcome and can be emailed to noto.la.diega@gmail.com or tweeted to @guidonld.

bottom of page