Big Data
Big data focuses on how large-scale datasets are stored, retrieved and analyzed. It is one of the most consequential and pioneering fields in recent years, in large part due to its capacity to reveal new insights and accurate, reliable values, furthering extant knowledge and improving how companies from various fields, such as medicine, security, commerce and more, are managed.
However, alongside the many built-in advantages databases have, database owners are also faced with new challenges to be mindful of. For example, when information collected in databases concerns data on individuals, the database owner must comply with the provisions of the Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981, and the regulations accompanying it (including the Privacy Protection Regulations (Data Security), 5777-2017). In addition, where the applicable conditions have been met, a dataset may be considered a trade secret as defined in the Commercial Torts Law, 5759-1999, requiring appropriate confidentiality and adequate level of security in order to prevent leaking of data and to receive proper protection under the law. Moreover, when closing agreements based on analysis of big data, parties must ensure that the potential embodied in databases is fully tapped, while respecting the parties’ rights and making certain that the relevant legal provisions have been put into practice.
The law firm Gilat, Bareket & Co. specializes in providing legal assistance to entities collecting, researching and generating value from big data, both with respect to database owners meeting the requirements of the law (see in this regard the value vis-à-vis privacy protection) and in negotiations between parties to an agreement. As part of this legal support, the firm designs agreements based on the contract’s nature and the parties’ cooperation, and settles legal issues such as ownership of data and the value derived from it as well as commercial issues such as consideration parties are to receive, how data is to be accessed and used, and more, all while taking the varied legal, ethical and commercial considerations in this new and groundbreaking field into account.
