New Technologies and Regulation: the «Uber Case»

Technological innovation inevitably makes laws obsolete: today, ice production would certainly not be considered a public service, and yet the item was expressly listed in the unified text of 1925 on the subject. In this process of modernization, courts play a significant role. Called to rule upon the disputes on the digital platform transport service offered by Californian company Uber, European and American courts took different positions: the former were mainly concerned with guaranteeing regulatory powers, while the latter recognized the reasonableness of specific rules for the transportation network companies. In Italy, the inadequacy of the 1992 regulations emerged clearly; the Constitutional Court has called for a reform that takes advantage of the simultaneous process of experimentation that is taking place in nume- rous legal systems.