Overview

Mayer Brown represents a diverse range of clients who value legal excellence, technical knowledge and business vision. Mayer Brown’s Connected & Autonomous Vehicles group provides clients with integrated, practical advice in negotiations, regulatory compliance and internal governance tailored to the needs of the automotive industry.

To successfully deliver connected and autonomous vehicles, automakers need to build commercial relationships, comply with new safety regulations and address cybersecurity and privacy risks.

The automotive industry is poised to revolutionize the market for personal transportation through its advances in connected and autonomous vehicles. These technologies offer a new market of enormous potential for automakers, as well as for existing automotive suppliers and software and application developers working in the automotive space for the first time. But, as industry participants know, great opportunities come with significant risks—there will be winners and losers.

To be among the winners, players must:

  • Build commercial relationships to engineer and integrate the necessary components and upgrade those components throughout the vehicle’s life in response to rapidly changing consumer preferences and transportation delivery models
  • Anticipate, understand and comply with evolving safety regulations and related requirements
  • Address cybersecurity and privacy risks

Mayer Brown’s Connected & Autonomous Vehicles group brings together highly skilled commercial and regulatory lawyers with deep automotive industry knowledge and unparalleled experience in these three areas. Our lawyers:

  • Are internationally recognized for their work helping companies build business technology agreements that can operate on a global level and enhance the long-term relationships between customers and their suppliers
  • Represent major vehicle manufacturers in regulatory matters before federal and state agencies and are called upon by individual clients and industry associations to address significant policy issues
  • Have extensive experience developing strategic and practical approaches for managing cybersecurity and privacy risks for a wide range of enterprises, including automotive companies

Experiencia

  • Represent the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (“ISAC”), the purpose of which is to facilitate cybersecurity awareness and coordination across the automotive industry, in corporate governance and the negotiation of information technology and other services agreements, and represented the Automotive ISAC in connection with the successful motion to quash a subpoena to produce materials in connection with a lawsuit against one of the ISAC’s members – the first subpoena to be served on an ISAC.
  • Represented a major vehicle manufacturer in negotiating contracts with providers of original equipment and after-market telematics equipment and services, including wireless vehicle connectivity and a wide range of features such as entertainment, safety, maintenance, communication and navigation.
  • Advised a leading Asian Motor trading group (with a number of popular consumer brands) on unauthorized access to customer data through use of search engines. Our advice included whether and how data security breach notification needs to be given to the Privacy Commissioner and/or affected customers.
  • Negotiated an agreement with a telematics provider for a major automotive client’s vehicles. As part of that agreement, we negotiated various privacy concerns involving telematics, as well as the provider’s privacy policy.
  • Advised a major vehicle manufacturer on the legality of a proposed program for monitoring encrypted communications passing through the client's computer systems. The first phase of the project involved advice on US law. The second phase of the project involved advice on the proposed program's legality in several jurisdictions around the world.
  • Regularly advise major vehicle manufacturers on NHTSA product safety matters regarding autonomous vehicles.