All That Glitters

Getting what you pay for—and then some

More companies looking to keep pace with the fast-changing mobile market are busily buying up app developers. Google spent almost $1 billion in June to acquire traffic app developer Waze. Apptopia is a growing online marketplace for the buying and selling of rights to apps.

But companies should know that if they acquire an app developer, they may inherit all sorts of consumer data collected by its apps. That can lead to scrutiny from regulators and the media over how that data is used, says Reed Freeman Jr., a Morrison & Foerster partner who focuses on privacy and data security. How this data should be used and protected is a new area of law, and there are few statutes to go by, he says. So companies need to follow enforcement decisions by regulators, primarily the FTC, to get a sense of where enforcement is heading.