IN-HOUSE TMT OF THE YEAR 2018

BT Legal (Privacy, Security & Internet Law)WINNER

BT’s in-house legal team demonstrated the power of innovation in the law to protect a hugely valuable asset in a dynamic regulatory environment, The Lawyer Awards judges said.

This award-winning entry, which judges said was “very impressive for a 12-lawyer team”, involved a real-time website blocking court orders to prevent the piracy of Premier League and UEFA games.

This process, which departed from previous orders where the Court would be aware of the infringers at the time of writing it, allowed BT to take immediate action during the broadcasting of the game when the infringement is still relevant.

A team led by head of legal privacy, security and internet Greg Hughes championed and proposed the orders, as well as preparing the application and assisting with technical implementation. The team also proposed and helped to transfer this system to UEFA.

Using audience data and internet traffic through ISPs to measure the activity to these infringing sites live during matches meant that BT could prove that a spike meant that these sites were being used for piracy.

It ultimately led to a High Court Order for the last 8 weeks of the 2016/17 PL season as a “trial run” which was then renewed for the 2017/18 season. The judges were wowed by the BT team, calling their work ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘creative’.

Highly commended: Visa

Creative problem solving took centre stage, as the in-house team at Visa worked on the launch of a new internal innovation centre. Under the leadership of former Deutsche Bank in-houser Emma Slatter, the team worked on the launch of an environment for investment in fin tech startups to come up with creative solutions for payment products. Novel legal issues encountered in the TMT sector meant that the team had to develop a new way of handling the disclosure of confidential information. The Lawyer Awards judges described this work as “tangible progress in a highly regulated sector”.

Commended: Litigation Team, Sky Legal

The sky legal team worked on 13 cases to combat subscribers who illegally distribute streams of Sky’s content. Judges said: “A strong submission, highlighting the big impact made by a small team in tackling piracy, including unique and innovative solutions.”