Bradley Partner David Lucas Quoted in LegalTech News on GDPR Concerns

Bradley attorney David Lucas was quoted in LegalTech News on the realities that businesses should expect to face in a post General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) world. The GDPR was instituted in part to provide some regulatory cohesion to the data privacy landscape that covers the European Union’s 28 member states. However, it seems that the GDPR provides splinters of a standard rather than one cohesive obligation that passes from border to border unchanged. As an effect, businesses are now alleging to have worked on M&A transactions that had not progressed as a result of GDPR concerns.

“Right now that’s an uncertainty and I think that an organization needs to do a lot of diligence around the perspective on the liability of acquiring a foreign entity,” Lucas explained.

Lucas pointed out that the French regulatory authority Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) has already come out and said that by its very nature, blockchain is noncompliant and will require a greater emphasis on disclosure and consent. But for his money, innovation is more heavily impacted by an inconsistent application of the law.

“I think the uncertainty of what’s going to be required and the uncertainty of what it’s going to take to comply is really right now what’s dampening some innovation,” Lucas said.

He argued that a more streamlined regulatory landscape would allow entrepreneurs to build GDPR compliance into their products from the ground up rather than trying to shoehorn requirements into the process as they arise.

The complete article, “GDPR: One Year Down, Forever to Go,” first appeared in LegalTech News on May 2, 2019.