Pedro da Palma Gonçalves and Leonor Melo Ribeiro signed the article "API, DPI and Sandboxes: a recipe for the smart cities of the future", available for consultation on the WhatNext.Law website.

The article begins with a reflection on the flow and sharing of information in smart cities, which poses "numerous risks, particularly those related to intellectual property, data protection and cybersecurity".

In this context, the lawyers point out that "Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the central tool for guaranteeing connectivity between different computer programmes", and question whether or not "the development of smart cities is limited by the attribution of exclusive rights over the use and exploitation of APIs, as 'computer programmes' protected by copyright?".

• The article is available here.