INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Intellectual and Industrial Property

IP assets development, management, and protection  represent a constant challenge for companies  therefore we are at your side in protecting and enhancing your intellectual property.

We take care of  contractual, extrajudicial, judicial and any other aspect  concerning industrial property rights.

Our approach is practical and concrete, aimed at making your IP assets a real instrument of competitiveness in the global market.

Our assistance also aims at  providing suitable tools to enable you to  decide  on how  to best safeguard your investments in R&D.

Our team is  made up of experienced and highly qualified professionals with a deep understanding of the most innovative technological sectors. This means not only protecting your rights but also understanding the dynamics of your sector and the challenges you face daily, so that  you can focus on developing your business.

Copyright and related rights

Our professionals have a solid experience in protecting copyright on a wide range of creative works. This includes not only traditional sectors such as publishing, cinematography , music, photography, architecture and visual arts but also software and rights related to new technologies.

Contractual matters

We assist our clients in every stage  of commercial agreements drafting, negotiation, and execution  with regard to the exploitation and development of IP rights:

  • Assignment, licensing and development agreements;
  • IT, software, and technology transfer agreements;
  • Agreements in advertising, marketing and promotional sector;
  • Distribution agreements.

IP Litigation and Unfair Competition

We  advise you in litigation in order to defend your IP rights, providing support before all judicial, administrative (UIBM and EUIPO) and independent authorities. Our expertise includes patents, utility models, trademarks, designs, copyright, as well as misleading and comparative advertising. We also represent clients before the Unified Patent Court (UPC).

Our extensive experience regards also  unfair competition, misappropriation of trade secrets, and transfer of employees.

Trade secrets and know-how

We assist companies in defining guidelines concerning know-how protection and trade secrets misappropriation cases.

Advertising Law

Our firm advises  clients in defining right away the advertising campaigns so that to minimize the potential risk of third-party rights violation. We also deal with advertising agreements by  drafting and negotiating .

Our professionals support clients in proceedings before the Italian Competition Authority concerning misleading advertising and before the Giurì dell’Autodisciplina Pubblicitaria (Advertising Self-Regulation Authority). Moreover, we offer assistance in judicial proceedings related to alleged unfair advertising practices.

Trademark Portfolio Management

Tonucci & Partners provides assistance in managing complex trademark portfolios, aiming to enhance your rights and protect your ideas through the following services:

  • Priority searches and registration opinions;
  • Filing, prosecution, and registration of Italian, European, international and foreign trademarks;
  • Trademark surveillance, oppositions and cancellation actions against third-party trademarks;
  • Management of trademark portfolio deadlines;
  • Domain name reallocation procedures;
  • Customs monitoring and anti-counterfeiting measures.

Due Diligence

We provide specific assistance in  acquisition context or sale of company shares or businesses by supporting the verification process of any critical issues related to IP rights.

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Right to be forgotten and balance with the right to information.

The Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione), recently returned to the topic of the so-called right to be forgotten, affirmed the need to preserve the historicity of news when it is of interest to the community and to the economic and social history of a Country, while reaffirming the need to balance the interest of the community to maintain the memory of past news with the interest of the individual to maintain control of his or her personal data. From this point of view, the Court considers the deindexing of news on the web together with its updating to be an appropriate measure to balance the individual’s right to be forgotten with the collective right to information.

18 June 2020

Data breach: accidental dissemination of whistleblowers’ data.

Rome’s University “La Sapienza” ended up in the Italian Data Protection Authority’s sights after having notified a violation of personal data as required by art. 33 of the Regulations. Such violation concerned the disclosure of personal data processed through the University’s platform used for the management of offence reports by employees and third parties within the whistleblowing regime. Following the notification breach, the Authority initiated investigations. Violations of the measures provided in the Regulations for the protection of personal data were ascertained, with particular emphasis to the provisions relating to the current security measures in force.

12 June 2020

Cookies and consent: relevant news from the EDPB.

On May 4, 2020, the European Data Protection Board adopted an updated version of the Guidelines on consent under Regulation 2016/679, originally drafted by Article 29 Working Party back in 2017 and already subject to a first revision on April 10, 2018, introducing some important new features regarding cookies.

5 June 2020

FAQ of the Data Protection Authority: data processing at work in context with the current health emergency.

The measures imposed on public and private companies for the containment of the Covid-19 virus, provided for by current legislation and the “Shared protocol for the regulation of measures to contain the spreading of the Covid-19 virus in the place of work” of 14 March 2020, as amended and integrated, include provisions involving the processing of personal data by employers, both in the data relating to employees and to any third parties accessing company’s premises, ensuring the health and safety within the place of work. Therefore, more specifically to the critical data protection issues, the Data Protection Authority has intervened providing companies with concrete indications regarding the correct processing of personal data in the current emergency situation.

29 May 2020

COVID, mobile apps and privacy: European Commission guidance available online (pt. II).

As part of a Community approach to combating and containing the diffusion of the COVID-19 virus (the “coronavirus”), the European Commission has adopted the Guide to Data Protection in Applications to Support the Fight Against the COVID 19 Pandemic (the “Guide”).
Herewith below you can find the second part of the analysis of the aforesaid guidelines (the first part is available here) concerning privacy by design and by default, measures to be taken in order to ensure compliance with the principles of lawfulness, purposes of data minimization, access and storage limitation, based on the various features of the apps under review.

15 May 2020

COVID, mobile apps and privacy: European Commission guidance available online (pt. I).

As part of an EU approach to fighting and containing the diffusion of the COVID-19 virus (the “coronavirus”), the European Commission has issued its guidelines for mobile applications supporting the fight against the pandemic, specifically focusing on the related data protection features.
The implementation of digital technologies (e.g. “contact tracing”) seems to represent a useful tool for national health authorities to monitor and contain the diffusion of the virus, especially in the post-emergency phase when containment measures are lifted, provided that the use of such solutions are made in the full respect of the citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms, including, first and foremost, the individuals’ right to privacy and respect for their private lives.
Herewith below is the first part of the analysis of the aforesaid guidelines, that set out a number of general principles intended for the application, regardless of the specific characteristics of the individual applications.

14 May 2020
    • Tonucci & Partners