Retail and e-commerce

Our retail and e-commerce team is comprised of approximately 20 lawyers. We work for both local and international retail companies with brick-and-mortar and online stores, often acting as sales mediators for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We have engaged in over one hundred e-commerce projects, many of which have involved legally complicated and regulated areas and required a comprehensive approach or completely innovative legal solutions.

RETAIL

From the perspective of law, the retail area includes not only the assessment of unfair business practices and consumer discrimination, complaints procedures, the offer and sale of goods outside the usual business premises, the sending of commercial and marketing communication, consumer and marketing competitions, benefits and other loyalty programmes, but also the regulation of significant market power, price-setting and client-supplier relations. The duty to inform customers imposed on businesses is also significant and includes the extensive and highly complex issue of product labelling, packaging or labels, and correct set-up of the pricing policy (especially discount promotions and recommended prices). The fight against counterfeits or industrial property rights conflicts can also be part of solutions for businesses in the area of retail.

E-COMMERCE

E-commerce is closely related to retail. It is unimaginable without perfectly functioning processes and a platform. The platform must be built on contractual documentation for the creation of IT solutions, including its design; proper business terms and conditions for the provision of online services and a complaints policy; a proper data processing policy; suitable payment solutions; protected trademarks and registered designations. The possibility of out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes should also be taken into account. A number of e-commerce projects face significant sector-specific legal regulation, the assessment of which requires expert assessment in numerous areas of law.

It is necessary to correctly and functionally set all e-commerce processes to make them compliant with the applicable legislation and help eliminate the risk of frequent inspections and potential fines.

In the long run, we particularly focus on the following areas:

• Drafting business terms and conditions, complains policies, agreement termination forms and other documents in B2C and B2B relationships
• Individual assessment of all types and forms of marketing communication to ensure they comply with the law
• Legal review of consumer and other marketing competitions
• Regulation of online business and e-commerce, including the marketplace and other less traditional forms of online sale
• Review of existing contractual relationships with consumers and their adjustment in line with the applicable legislation and market standards
• Assessment of all marketing and sales activities of clients and their competitors directed towards the consumer with the aim of eliminating unfair business practices or unfair competition
• Legal set-up of the correct price-setting and discount promotions, including tax assessment
• Labelling of various types of products so that the labels contain all information required by legislation (including foodstuffs)
• Monitoring of identical or similar trademarks attempted to be registered by third parties
• Monitoring and practical enforcement in the sale of counterfeit goods
• Representation in proceedings before inspection authorities supervising the set-up of business processes or consumer protection, representation before courts or in out-of-court proceedings

We also address all of the above topics in our professional publications, lectures and on our blog: https://www.havelpartners.blog/dusevni-vlastnictvi/.