Meeting the Client

Your client is DigiAdvance Co, a company that manufactures robotics, develops associated software, and designs AI and digital systems for the human services industries, including the education, healthcare, aged care, sporting and government service-delivery sectors. It has offices in Melbourne, Singapore, San Francisco and Frankfurt.  

Your client is interested in accessing the Japanese market. Senior managers of DigiAdvance are due to visit your law firm later today to seek strategic advice about how to do so. In particular, your client is interested in JSportAI KK, a start-up that is developing robotics and AI technology for sports, particularly tennis.  

For example, JSportAI KK has developed new line-calling camera technology. Although Hawkeye remains the preferred technology at professional tennis events, JSportAI's technology that includes better audio responses. Instead of calling "fault" or "out", it can also detect when a call is close and give a verbal explanation of where the ball landed to satisfy incredulous players and fans  -- for example, that the ball landed 10% on the outside edge of the baseline. It also has software which contains an "emotion chip" that can provide "gentler voices" depending on the stage of the match, such as in a tiebreak. In Japan, however, the technology has been deployed in country clubs -- tennis is mostly a club sport for wealthy people in Japan, especially in the larger metropolitan cities -- and it has two problems for your client: (a) the audio messages are in Japanese; and (b) the encoded voices are "cute" anime-style voices that, while fun for the country club setting, are not appropriate for professional, globally-televised matches. 

JSportAI KK has also developed "live re-scheduling" software that can shift matches to different courts to ensure against late-ending night matches. This has immediate applications for professional tennis events, where some matches can stretch into the early hours of the morning. However, in light of the Sabalenka-Krejikova quarter-final controversy at the 2024 Australian Open (where the women players were asked to move from the main arena to a secondary court, a request they both refused), your client is concerned that the software code ensures gender equity in the algorithmic decision-making.

Your client is interested in JSportAI because it has been approached by Wimbledon and the US Open event organisers to develop "the next stage" in technology for improving the "quality of umpiring, efficiency in scheduling and other aspects of the fan experience" at these grand slam events in 2024. Although the tournaments are happy with Hawkeye, there are still complaints from certain players -- for example, Jelena Ostapenko -- that the technology might be unreliable; they want "Ostapenko-proofing". If your client is able to collaborate with JSportAI to develop new technological products and services for Wimbledon and the US Open, then interest would surely spread to the other grand slams, professional tournaments on the WTA and ATP tours, as well as lower-tier ITF and Futures events.

In short, your client is interested in negotiating for the purchase of JSportAI's new line-calling hardware but with the option to customise the technology so that it can communicate in English and remove the "cutesy" element in the emotion chip. It also wants to use the live-re-scheduling technology but with a gender-equity check built into the program.