Legal implications of smart production

Artificial intelligence (AI) in production – according to studies, productivity increases of up to 50 percent are possible as a result. The use of AI is required at all levels of production and – above all – across the respective company boundaries. However, this is accompanied by a wide range of legal and technical challenges.

The lawyers are focusing on three areas: data protection law, intellectual property, and competition and antitrust law. In the case of data protection, the main question is when a reference to a person can arise in the use of data – for example, through the processing of metadata from production, which at the same time could allow conclusions to be drawn about the productivity of employees. In the area of intellectual property, the possibilities for using and exploiting automatically generated data, for example sensor data, are of particular interest. Finally, in competition and antitrust law, the focus is on the protection of trade secrets and, in general, on access to data through platforms such as IIP-Ecosphere.

The lawyers are pursuing an application-oriented approach that is intended to produce not only scientific publications but also practical aids. In IIP-Ecosphere, they therefore closely involve partner companies in their research, as they recently did through a survey and a subsequent workshop. The cooperation not only serves to identify problems relevant to practice, but also to develop proposals for solutions and assistance.