Can you tell us a little about your significant accomplishments over the last few years, as a team or by yourself?

We reinvented the way we worked due to COVID-19 and repositioned the role of legal and intellectual property within the deployment of the new internal SafeAgile organisation.

We as a team within Orange put in place the enforcement of compliance and I have encompassed the role of compliance officer too. We have hired a new DPO and taken a closer look along with our legal and technical teams at our latest developed solutions like analytics, targeted advertising, monitoring, apps to track the flows of data to cope with GDPR requirements.

I have also started learning Spanish as negotiations in Latin America, a key country for our company, often are in Spanish.

In my public affairs role, I have deployed new methods at an institutional level to alert on increases in IP infringements, published many articles, and participated in numerous online conferences worldwide as a speaker to advocate for enhanced legislation and review of the protection of online contents.

All of this was achieved while sharing my knowledge of the last 20 years at VIACCESS ORCA with the person who shall take over from me next year. These last three years have been more challenging than the preceding ten years.

Have any recent political, economic or regulatory changes impacted your work or company? How are you dealing with this?

The last few years have been marked by a series of events such as COVID- 19, not only because of remote work but because it has drastically changed the mindsets and the relationship to work. I am happy to say that I could keep the entire team, by maintaining regular calls, sharing of information and constant training.

COVID-19 has further enhanced certain practices I was already fighting, such as audio-visual piracy via illegal streaming. This has necessitated a serious review of the lobbying approach developed in the recent years with the EU institutions, with Anti-Piracy associations and bodies like Interpol and Europol to take the fight against piracy to the next level. Key steps could be achieved via strong efforts and coordination between all public and private stakeholders and new legislation permitting a more proactive approach from the courts, such as dynamic injunctions for live events in France or the Digital Service Act in the EU.

The last few years have further been marked by a strong acceleration of innovation and introduction of new technologies driven by artificial intelligence, data management and by the introduction of key new legislation like the GDPR, all the compliance policies and lately the whistle blowing directive. I have hired the services of an external DPO to help us in the constant need for update and training as requested by the GDPR.

What do you predict will be the biggest change to the legal market in France, in the next few years?

One of the biggest changes will be in the role of the general counsel. GCs will have to be ambassadors, leaders, understand latest technologies and turn them into business, meaning having to be agile in a fast paced environment while at the same time being confronted by an increasingly complex and heavy legal environment (GDPR, ethics and compliance rules).