IT and technology

Our firm has 9 partners and a total of 45 experienced lawyers dedicated to technology law. We have the largest team focused on technology law on the Czech and Slovak markets and it is not only thanks to this that we are able to handle the most comprehensive projects with overlaps into all legal and tax practice areas. We work for the largest technology giants and international investors, financial institutions, public authorities, as well as local IT companies, start-ups and early-stage entrepreneurs. We are technology enthusiasts who always look at our clients’ needs comprehensively and in context.

IT AND LAW

Today, we can hardly imagine our daily lives without information technology; we see it as an integral part of our daily existence. What is often underestimated, however, is the legal aspect and ex post solutions are not fortunate. It is appropriate and efficient to prevent this.

Our team has extensive know-how in all IT project life cycles, we deliver solutions and provide advice in the private and public sectors, both from the perspective of clients and contractors and from the perspective of users. We provide comprehensive legal services from the idea itself, through the development, commercialization, implementation and operation of IT solutions, to the termination of cooperation, the resolution of vendor lock-in situations and IT disputes (including conducting domain disputes worldwide). We also provide comprehensive support to contracting authorities and individual participants in all phases of the public procurement process, including representation before competition authorities and administrative courts.

Due to the complexity and diversity of IT solutions, we deal with a wide range of fields of law – in addition to the obligatory fields of law such as intellectual property, cybersecurity, data protection and consumer law, we are increasingly dealing with regulated sectors such as healthcare, and banking and finance.

TRANSACTIONAL ADVICE

Technology is closely related to transactions. Our technology team frequently provides comprehensive transactional and legal-tax advice to foreign and local investors, start-ups and project founders in dozens of technology-oriented transactions per year.

We have extensive experience in negotiating international transactions worth billions of Czech crowns as well as smaller local transactions for Czech clients, and we are uniquely able to combine technology law advice with transactional advice (corporate, tax, accounting, and finance). At the same time, we have excellent relationships with major investors from among individuals and large investment funds. Our clients thus have the most comprehensive international support available from Czech and Slovak law firms on both legal and tax levels.

FIELDS OF THE FUTURE

In our practice, we actively deal with new technological phenomena such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, artificial intelligence and FinTech solutions, both from the perspective of regulation and their development and commercialization. We support technology partnerships with our clients and try not to be left behind: our team, together with the start-up Mytitle, has launched an innovative “digital notary” service called Certoo, which is based on blockchain technology, and we use the technology extensively in client services in the area of personal data or comprehensive  services in the area of whistleblowing.

COMPUTERISATION

We are fully aware of the need to computerise public administration and the everyday life of companies and individuals. We advise our clients on how to efficiently transition to modern digital functioning of the organization and its processes, how to properly sign documents electronically or identify persons or how to comprehensively perform digital archiving.

We are actively involved in the preparation of legislation introducing computerisation into Czech law and we always have the most up-to-date information for our clients. For example, we were involved in drafting the Act on Right to Digital Services and of the BankID Act introducing banking identity into Czech law.

In the long term, we have primarily been addressing the following areas:

• Preparation and revision of various IT contracts – development, implementation, service, licensing, cloud contracts, contracts with developers, etc.
• Individual legal assessment of a specific existing or planned IT solution and proposal for its correct legal and tax regimes
• Drafting business terms and the terms of use for various applications, privacy policies, cookies policies, and other necessary documents
• Conducting local and international domain disputes
• Comprehensive transactional advice – due diligence, negotiation, financing, structuring and completion of IT transactions of all types
• Comprehensive and individual support in drafting all parts of tender and contractual documentation in the context of IT public procurement, including reflecting the limits of tendering procedures and the decision-making practice of supervisory authorities
• Full legal support to tenderers at all stages of the tendering procedure
• Representing clients before the Office for the Protection of Competition and courts
• Assessing the impact of regulation on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs or FinTech solutions, obtaining all necessary public licences
• Advising on the transition to modern digital functioning of organisations, and assessing individual tools facilitating digitisation

We also share our knowledge in specialist literature, at specialised workshops and industry discussion panels, and also on our blog.