A New Look At An Old Hot Topic: The Internet Of Things – IT and Internet

Thanks to Rachel Bragg, law student at
Cumberland School of Law and Summer Associate in our Birmingham
office, Summer 2023, for her contributions to this
article.

I. Introduction

In 1999, computer scientist Kevin Ashton coined the term
“the Internet of Things” (“IoT”) in order to
put a name to his idea of using RFID¹ chips to track
items as they moved throughout a supply chain.²
“Though there is no specific definition of IoT, the concept
focuses on how computers, sensors and objects interact with each
other and collect information relating to their
surroundings.”³ Fast-forward twenty-four years, and
the buzzword phrase now describes an interconnected network of
devices (“things”) linking various products we use every
day. Growing at warp speed, some estimates say 14.3 billion IoT
connections existed in 2022, with almost 17 billion predicted by
the end of 2023.⁴

For…