The common myth about artificial intelligence and emerging technology is that the law has not caught up. The opposite problem is now the real one: overlapping regimes — European, federal, state, and sector-specific — apply to the same product at the same time, and they do not agree with each other. Our emerging-technology practice helps businesses contract, comply, and resolve disputes inside that overlap.
The Regulatory Landscape, Briefly
The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) entered into force in August 2024 and has been phasing in: prohibited-practice rules from early 2025 and general-purpose AI obligations from August 2025. Following the EU’s 2026 amendment package, the main high-risk-system obligations are now scheduled to apply from December 2027, with certain product-related categories following in 2028 — a moving timeline that matters to any business selling AI-enabled products into the EU. In the United States there is no comprehensive federal AI statute as of this writing; instead, state laws are arriving — including Texas’s Responsible AI Governance Act (effective January 1, 2026) and Colorado’s replacement AI framework enacted in 2026, whose principal duties begin in January 2027 — alongside FTC enforcement against overstated AI claims. This summary is current as of August 26, 2026 and is exactly the kind of moving target we track for clients.
What We Handle
AI procurement and licensing agreements
AI vendor contracts raise questions ordinary software agreements do not: whether your data may train the vendor’s models, who owns fine-tuned models and outputs, what performance can honestly be warranted, and who indemnifies for infringement or harmful output. We negotiate these terms on both the customer and vendor side, building on our international licensing work.
Intellectual property in AI-assisted work
Under current U.S. Copyright Office guidance, purely AI-generated material is not protected by copyright — protection turns on human authorship, which makes how your team uses these tools a legal question, not just a workflow one. We advise on protecting AI-assisted work product, trade-secret treatment of prompts, datasets, and models, and disputes over training data. Related: our trademark and IP practice.
AI governance and use policies
Businesses adopting AI need short, enforceable internal rules: what tools are approved, what data may never be entered into them, human review requirements, and vendor-diligence standards. We draft policies proportionate to the company’s size and regulatory exposure — not fifty-page frameworks nobody reads.
Technology disputes
Failed implementations, systems that do not perform as promised, and fights over data rights at the end of a vendor relationship are, at bottom, commercial disputes — and we handle them the way we handle our other cross-border disputes: contract analysis first, then negotiation, litigation, or arbitration as the agreement provides.
Digital-asset commercial disputes
Where blockchain and digital-asset matters present as commercial disputes — breached token-purchase or development agreements, smart-contract performance disagreements, custody and access disputes — we treat them as contract and commercial-litigation problems. We do not provide investment advice, and where securities-law questions predominate we associate or refer specialist counsel.
Honest Limits
We are business lawyers, not software engineers, and we do not build or audit models. Where a matter turns on technical facts, we retain qualified technical experts through counsel — a structure that can support privilege or work-product protection depending on purpose, facts, and jurisdiction, though it does not guarantee it. We also do not run a venture-capital or fundraising practice; our role in financing contexts is limited to the commercial and cross-border legal issues within our practice areas.
Start With the Contract
Nearly every emerging-technology problem we see could have been narrowed by a better agreement. If you are adopting, selling, or disputing an AI or technology product, send us the contract — contact our office or review our retainer and payment options.
Regulatory summary current as of August 26, 2026.
