IP, Competition Law

The Challenge
In recent years, the protection and exploitation of intellectual property rights, be they brands, patents, or copyrights and related rights, including technology transfer, have gained more sig-nificance than ever before as a result of the tightening of EU technology requirements and at-tempts to achieve harmonisation within the Community. The importance of intellectual property rights and information technology has also increased enormously due to the revolutionary technological changes that have occurred in the fields of telecommunications and new media over the past few years. Intellectual property has become a highly valuable economic asset and its importance is bound to continue increasing.

If advertising is unfair under the Unfair Competition Act or if it infringes intellectual property rights, it can be prohibited by an interim injunction with immediate effect. Suitable timely legal examinations eliminate the danger of incurring costs associated with such injunctions and thus contribute substantially to the success of advertising campaigns.

Our Expertise
fwp’s legal advisers have many years of comprehensive experience in both protecting and defending intellectual property rights. The assessment of advertising campaigns, the submis-sion of applications for the issue of interim injunctions, the preparation of licensing agreements, cooperation projects in research and development and in technology transfer, M&A and financing transactions involving intellectual property rights, as well as IT outsourcing are among fwp’s areas of specialisation. The firm’s clients include telecommunications and media companies as well as trading enterprises. The fact that the firm also focuses on the re-lated fields of company law, antitrust law and public law represents a particular asset.

At the interface to the field of public law, fwp has special expertise in the fields of biotechnol-ogy, foodstuffs law, pharmaceutical law, pharmacy law and health law.

Your Team
fwp’s IP/IT team is composed of Markus Kajaba and Sabine Fehringer.
Markus Kajaba specialises in unfair competition issues and the defence of intellectual property rights. He is an expert in the assessment of advertising measures and has been highly successful in the litigation of unfair competition cases.

Sabine Fehringer’s field of specialisation is the protection and exploitation of intellectual property rights. She has a fund of special knowledge relating to the formulation and structuring of licensing, research & development and technology transfer agreements and the assessment of advertising campaigns, as well as in the areas of IT, data protection and telecommunications. She also handles issues relating to the legal regime covering gambling and games of chance and is the author of specialist publications on the subject.

Michael Hecht, who is head of the public law team, also focuses on all types of life science issues, such as the authorisation and licensing of pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs.