In the field of IT, we divide our clients into two main groups:

• Developers and suppliers of IT; and
• Users of IT.

The requirements of these groups are subtly different.

IT developers and suppliers require us to ensure that their obligations to their customers are commercially and legally certain (whilst providing for essential flexibility), that their liabilities are clearly understood and that their valuable background intellectual property remains uncontaminated and re-usable.

Users of IT also require commercial and legal certainty, but with a much higher focus on limiting the risk and consequence of any failure. For them, IT has become an essential facilitator and they need to ensure that their suppliers are committed to provide what they require, when they need it.

The field of IT is evolving very rapidly. Convergence products are now a reality and standardisation is gaining popularity, open source is ubiquitous in many mainstream products and software patents are an increasingly contentious issue. The traditional supplier/customer source-complier-object model is largely nonsense. We recognise that in order to give the best advice to our clients in the area, we need a detailed understanding of these changes and their consequences on the application of the law to assist our clients.