IP & Art

Uber will be a representative example for the digital company in the gig economy. It is just a digital tax company which digitalized the current offline taxi company and put them into digital world and gig economy as well.

In this business model, the company itself does not cost a lot to establish a huge taxi company, and make a lot of money through the fees for the uber taxi driver to use the uber app. Further, it will not take any risk in the operation of such online company in the legal regal resposibilities' perspective which may trigger some possible controversy or debate.

In the perspective of the uber driver, they will be individual business person rather than an employee, which give more flexibilities in terms of work hour, etc. But to some extent, they may be less beneficial in the fringe benefit of ordinary employee, etc.

In this regard, there will be several issues to be solved in terms of the recovery of damages which the third parties will suffer from the misconduct of the uber driver, and also the protection of the uber driver as a factual employee's status. 

In this context, we may a practical solution model for such problem in Portuguese laws in relation to the operation of uber BM. It mandated the uber to establish a minimum compnay which hires a uber drivers as employess, and legal resonsiblity of  any accident caused by the uber driver will be borne by the uber company.

This shows us that in the transition to digital era, some modifications of the digital business model will be inevitable.