European Union: Technology

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the legal and tax profession, moving beyond simple tool adoption to transform how professionals create value and serve clients.

Automated bot and AI traffic has surpassed human-generated web content for the first time, raising concerns about the recycling of information and the loss of original human creativity. As demographic shifts create structural worker shortages across developed nations, artificial intelligence and automation are becoming essential rather than optional, potentially creating significant investment opportunities in the infrastructure and resources needed to support this technological transformation.

Goldman Sachs projects AI-related investment will exceed $1 trillion in 2026, with infrastructure, software, and second-order beneficiaries presenting clear opportunities.

A European Patent Office Technical Board of Appeal decision examines whether incorporating energy costs into blow molder input parameters constitutes an inventive step over prior art that considered energy efficiency. The central dispute revolves around whether "energy costs" encompasses energy consumption or is limited to monetary costs, and whether a claim broad enough to produce results indistinguishable from prior art can satisfy inventive step requirements.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the digital landscape, with automated bot traffic now surpassing human-generated content for the first time in history. This shift raises critical questions about the future of original content creation, employment, and investment opportunities in an AI-driven economy. From demographic labor shortages to banking innovations and property tax reforms, discover how these interconnected trends are transforming business and personal finance.

A tea party tradition at Cleverbit Software reveals how casual kitchen conversations about thermodynamics evolved into a company ritual that defines its engineering culture. Simon Azzopardi, the company's Director, discusses how this unique approach to onboarding reflects broader strategic shifts in software delivery, AI governance, and the company's expansion across international markets.

The Irish Government has published the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026, establishing a comprehensive framework for supervising and enforcing the EU AI Act in Ireland. This legislation creates the AI Office of Ireland as an independent statutory body to coordinate AI regulation, introduces a distributed oversight model involving multiple sectoral authorities, and provides detailed procedures for adjudication and administrative sanctions. The Bill addresses critical questions about how Ireland

The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent for a method of developing rod patterns in nuclear reactors based on simulation, ruling that the claimed features do not produce a technical effect. This decision examines whether simulation results for reactor design constitute technical contributions when the rod patterns are not directly implemented in actual reactors and may have non-technical uses such as study purposes.

Le Règlement sur l'Intelligence Artificielle impose aux fournisseurs de systèmes d'IA à haut risque une obligation de classification écrite et opposable. Comment déterminer si votre système relève de l'annexe I ou III, et dans quels cas l'exception de l'article 6, paragraphe 3, peut-elle s'appliquer sans compromettre votre conformité face aux autorités de contrôle?