Stephenson Harwood

Intellectual property, tech & data

Simon is a commercial lawyer with a focus on IT transactions and emerging technologies. He has significant experience advising on complex IT and managed services arrangements, BPO/IT outsourcings, and systems integration and digital transformation projects. Simon also advises on software licensing, data protection compliance, cyber security, and new disruptive technologies, such as AI and machine learning.

Simon advises clients in relation to the development, licensing and deployment of technology, both from a supplier and customer perspective. His experience includes advising on business-critical colocation data centre agreements, the provision and procurement of software as a service, cloud computing, and licensing AI and machine learning solutions.

Simon also has extensive experience advising on outsourcing arrangements, including critical outsourcings under the European Banking Authority’s outsourcing guidelines (and similar regulatory regimes). Noteworthy experience includes the re-negotiation of business-critical managed services agreements for a financial services company, drafting standard terms for the provision of a credit management platform, and advising a multinational mass media conglomerate on a global framework agreement for outsourced contact centre services.

From a data perspective, Simon advises clients on a wide range of data protection issues, from data transfers to the regulatory considerations for new disruptive technology such as automated facial recognition. He also advises on cyber security, and the containment and reporting of cyber incidents and personal data breaches.

Simon has gained industry experience from a number of client secondments, including to the technology contracting team of a Big Four accountancy firms and the group legal team of a global telecommunications provider.