Trade mark, design, copyright, trade secrets and unfair competition

Protecting, enforcing, and risk-managing your brand, designs, know-how and digital assets across borders.

Our experienced team of experts provides a full-service intellectual property and technology offering, with a focus on complex and cross-border disputes, projects, and transactions.

We represent our clients in complex technology and know-how licensing matters, cross-border transactions and disputes, including in the tech and media sector. We advise on unfair competition, trade mark, design, trade secrets and copyright issues.

What we do

• Managing unfair competition risks: We are known for handling complex cases, where unfair competition issues often arise alongside other telecoms, consumer protection, antitrust or other regulatory issues. We have handled landmark cases involving test and mass claims initiated by consumer protection agencies and regulatory authorities.
• Protecting your brand and product design: We often advise businesses on EU Trade Marks, Community Designs, parallel national protections, and national systems of unfair competition and trade dress laws. We help clients to take advantage of the legal solutions that trade mark and design laws offer to maximize protection for their product innovations. Our team offers a full-service integrated advice ranging from brand and design strategy, licensing and exploitation to assistance in infringement or cancellation proceedings.
• Protecting your Know-how: Not all innovation can be protected by IP rights – this is where trade secrets come into play. Our practice has a strong focus on trade secrets litigation, an area which becomes more and more relevant to businesses because of new legislation implemented throughout the European Union and in other major jurisdictions. We have been handling leading edge cases (including the first Supreme Court cases in Austria and Germany concerning the EU Trade Secret Directive) and do this in a seamless manner across borders and practices. We also advise our clients on how to best protect their know-how in complex cooperation, licensing and R&S project, including in digital and IoT environments, and on the implications of the EU’s digital legislation on trade secret protection: the EU’s Data Act and the Digital Services Act.
• Digitisation and software: A focus of our practice is on digitisation projects involving complex IoT cooperation software development and licensing agreements regarding new technologies, including in the automotive sector. We advise on how to handle digital assets such as data and intellectual property and the risks and liabilities caused by operating in digitally connected environments.
• Copyright regulation: We advise major companies on national and international copyright exploitation and protection projects, as well as rights clearance and licensing Our teams have in-depth expertise on copyright and data regulation in the digital environment and broad experience in dealing with complex questions on collective rights management, negotiating with collecting societies and advising on copyright levies.

Our experienced team of intellectual property lawyers represents clients in contentious proceedings as well as in contractual negotiations. We advise in both areas seamlessly internationally, as part of our integrated global intellectual property practice.

Our clients include many global industry leaders, regional champions, and private clients from different industries – we advise media and entertainment creators, broadcasters, platform provides, and global tech companies on the development. Our team is at the forefront of disrupting industry developments such as 3D-printing, AI, and digitalisation more generally.