Competition Law

Competition and antitrust law sets reasonable boundaries for business practices, articulating the rules necessary to ensure a level playing field and safeguard a competitive market environment. These rules should not only be perceived as restrictive limits on what businesses can and cannot do in their market activities.  If understood and used well, they present significant opportunities for businesses.  We assist our clients to capitalize on these opportunities.

We advise our clients regarding the impact of competition law on successfully setting up new businesses, cooperative arrangements, and joint ventures on both the vertical and horizontal level. We also assist our clients in optimizing the structure and negotiations of their distribution, licensing, or agency agreements. Additionally, we help our clients navigate issues such as exclusivity and potentially restrictive practices across industries and on a transnational level in a way that emphasizes their opportunities and room for manoeuvre to implement their business objectives.

In keeping with our roots, we represent our clients in private disputes entailing questions of competition law, including state aid, as well as before Austrian and EU authorities.  In cross-border cases we work with highly specialized and reliable foreign partner law firms. In these cases, too, our approach is first and foremost economical, practical, and solution oriented, and our clients benefit from our considerable experience in diverse industry sectors derived from our technology-focused disputes practice.