Arhondoula Papapanagiotou & Partners Law Firm

The firm: Arhondoula Papapanagiotou & Partners has been successfully active in the Greek IP market for more than 20 years in relation to all sectors of intellectual property rights such as copyright, industrial designs, patents and trade marks, software and new technologies, while offering a complete range of services in the above fields in terms of litigation, legal counselling, contracts and negotiations. The firm has preserved a high reputation due to its business-oriented and accurate solutions as legal counsels and managers of IP portfolios (eg IPR business structuring, clearance, licensing and IPR audits for eligible investments and start ups) of large entities (including Greece’s largest venture capital), and at the same time is highly respected for its anti-counterfeiting and IP enforcement strategy. Important multinational enterprises (eg Business Software Aliance, Microsoft, Group Richemont) have entrusted the firm with their enforcement activities strategies in Greece in relation to their IP rights. At the same time, it has received the anti-piracy award of excellence for a successful and balanced combination of strong litigation and the enactment of Europe’s most successful government-led software anti-piracy campaign. The firm’s expertise in IPR protection and enforcement continues to expand through significant anti-piracy assignments by leading worldwide companies and by the most influential Greek investors in the market.

Moreover, Arhondoula Papapanagiotou & Partners’ expertise fully covers all sectors of the entertainment industry. For many years it has been successfully representing the two most important Greek film producers (with a repertory of more than 500 films each), the former largest Greek theatrical production company with a 60% market share, important Greek publishers, the most important Greek record companies (representing important repertories and artists), one of the major national TV broadcasters in Greece (in relation to IP issues), as well as individual rightholders (of copyright and/or neighbouring rights such as famous authors, directors, writers, composers, sculptors, actors, musicians etc), while the firm also handles IP issues of the Greek Collecting Society which represents the Greek national TV broadcasters under their capacity as producers of audiovisual works (in relation to their public performance rights). Covering all fields of entertainment law and having a profound knowledge of the Greek respective markets, the firm guarantees the protection of copyright and enforcement of IP law whenever needed, while it has repeatedly managed to have pioneering court decisions issued.

Finally, the scope of the firm’s services extends to issues which have grown to be crucial for the IT and media industry, such as compliance with the applicable data protection legislation. Arhondoula Papapanagiotou & Partners is a pioneer in the field of data protection and provides legal counsel to companies engaging, among other data-related activities, in transnational data processing and big data management. The firm’s data protection compliance services (provided by an experienced team of both legal counsels and technical experts) include comprehensive data protection audits, drafting and implementation of privacy, data security and data protection action plans and policies, communication with data protection authorities, legal management of international data transfers and drafting of data-related corporate rules for multinational entities.