Our consumer protection practice has been expanding over the last years, as a response to our clients’ needs and to the continuous increase of interest for this area for consumers (as becoming more aware of their rights). Our lawyers provide assistance on various consumer protection and sanitary veterinary and food safety matters, including product liability, labeling, warranties, promotional and sale campaigns, consumer information requirements, distance contracts in relation to products and services, food safety requirements, food alerts, animal diseases and welfare.

Our intellectual property practice covers a multitude of areas, addressing the legal requirements which should be considered in order to obtain legal protection, to maintain in full force the acquired rights and to dispose, either through licenses or assignments of the respective rights.

Consumer protection

Our services in this area include:

• Compliance with applicable laws of promotional and sales campaigns, including structuring promotional campaigns and drafting/review of promotional/advertising materials from the perspective of avoiding qualification as prohibited practice and in order to ensure full observance to applicable regulations;
• Legal assistance in all regulatory matters in connection with labelling, warranties, product safety and product liability;
• Legal assistance and representation in front of the authorities in connection with various consumer protection and food safety issues, including during controls and in challenging control documents (in collaboration with the litigation team);
• Advising on general consumer protection issues, including misleading and deceptive conduct, unconscionable conduct and the emerging area of unfair contracts;
• Providing advice on applicable regulations governing electronic commerce and privacy in the electronic communications sector, including with respect to online business;
• Legal assistance in connection with distance selling (online) contracts from the perspective of observing consumer protection regulations (including compliance with consumers’ rights, unfair clauses or unfair commercial practices regulations);
• Legal assistance on various food safety matters, including traceability requirements, materials in contact with food, food safety requirements (hygiene, microbiological, chemical) and restrictions and additional formalities in relation to food originating from areas affected by various diseases;
• Legal assistance on managing food alerts, including advising on withdrawal and recall obligations and procedures and liaising with the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority in the process;
• Legal assistance in connection with regulatory aspects, including review of permits, authorizations and licenses necessary for the operation of activities and storage and sale of various products and identification and assessment of compliance with related consumer protection and food safety obligations.

Data protection

Our dedicated practice focused on privacy right and protection of personal data has emerged within last years as a result of the increased attention paid by public authorities and individuals to privacy related matters and, implicitly, the increased need of our clients to ensure compliance with privacy related requirements, in the context of changing legislative framework. We can help clients to make maximum use of personal data within various databases and systems, in full confidence that they comply with relevant privacy regulation.

Our services in this area include:

• Identification of data protection requirements applicable for each specific case of processing personal data;
• Legal assistance in filing/ reviewing notifications with the DPA;
• Preparing and/or reviewing data protection language in the relevant documents concluded with employees, clients, suppliers, data-processors;
• Review documents containing data protection clauses (privacy policies, internal regulation, confidentiality statements, etc.);
• Legal assistance and representation in front of the Data Protection Authority and Romanian courts of law in connection with various data protection issues;
• Data protection compliance sessions/trainings.

Intellectual Property

Our advice addresses related key aspects, such as the connection between trademarks, trade names and domain names or use of industrial property rights and unfair commercial practices. Our intellectual property services include:

Intellectual property rights creation and legal protection

• Registration of industrial property rights, including at national, EU or international level
• Filing oppositions against IP registrations in proceedings before the relevant authorities
• Representing in disputes concerning infringements of trademarks, domain names, authors’ rights, and other intellectual property rights, including preparation of legal actions and representation in court hearings, or legal assistance in negotiations with the counterparty leading to an out-of-court settlement

Assistance of the clients in their strategy of creating additional revenue through their intellectual property business

• Drafting license and sub-license agreements, including registration of licenses with relevant authorities
• Drafting agreements on transfer of intellectual property rights, including registration of these agreements with relevant authorities
• Drafting agreements on external acquisition of intellectual property rights, e.g. software).

Negotiations in transactions

We provide consultancy, assistance and representation of clients with respect to:

• drafting, review and negotiation of joint venture agreements or other cooperation agreements having as object the exploitation of industrial property rights or of copyrights;
• drafting, review and negotiation of contracts in view of realization of certain types of works in the name and on behalf of the client.

Representation in front of Romanian Patent and Trademark Office, Romanian Copyright Office, other public authorities and courts-of-law

We provide assistance with respect to the trademarks applications, documentary searches in the official database of trademarks and interpretation of the search’s results, as well as relation to various stages and procedures of the intellectual property rights registration process, including in reexamination procedures.

Due diligence

We perform due diligence analysis in connection with intellectual property rights, in particular for the purpose of an efficient management or of protection or transfer of intellectual property rights of a company or in view of ensuring an efficient protection of the intellectual property generated by employees, by identifying existing risks and proposing efficient solutions.

Litigations

We provide consultancy and representation of clients in litigations regarding intellectual property rights, such as:

• litigations regarding the ownership right title;

• litigations regarding the contracts for transfer of intellectual property rights;

• claims of infringement and institution of special protection measures, etc.