M&A Technology Transactions

Tech­nol­ogy is intan­gi­ble, in par­tic­u­lar for M&A lawyers mak­ing tech­nol­ogy deals from their desks, far away from the asset. Intan­gi­ble assets are gen­er­ally hard to grasp and may raise cer­tain issues dur­ing a trans­ac­tion. This arti­cle high­lights some of the typ­i­cal issues in M&A tech­nol­ogy trans­ac­tions and sug­gests solu­tions to tackle/avoid them.

What is "Technology"?

From an M&A lawyer's per­spec­tive, "tech­nol­ogy" is dif­fi­cult to grasp: it is a mix of dif­fer­ent intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights (IPRs), includ­ing patents, util­ity mod­els, copy­rights, semi­con­duc­tor chip designs, as well as know-how and busi­ness secrets. Tech­nol­ogy as such is thus not tan­gi­ble, and that raises cer­tain issues in and brings com­plex­ity to a trans­ac­tion. This arti­cle high­lights some typ­i­cal exam­ples of such issues and sug­gests solu­tions to tackle/avoid them.