What are the most important legal principles you should be aware of when doing or setting up business in Germany? All will be explained - short and simple - from foundation to protection of intellectual property, important (company) contracts, financing and data protection, and beyond in our webinar series "Legal Boost for Start-ups".
The fifth webinar WRAP UP – Data Protection, Website & Exit focused on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), its requirements and current developments, legal requirements and challenges for websites, and on the various possible exits.
In the fifth webinar, our Munich partner Manuela Finger and Munich associate Lars Schönwald explained that the legal requirements for the website and data protection are regularly necessary evils that even start-ups have to deal with. A too careless handling can lead to warnings and fine proceedings. Nevertheless, one should not panic when dealing with the GDPR, and the various provisions applying to a website. Ideally, a start-up considers in advance what kind of data is to be processed for what purpose and on which permissions it can base this. Especially a quite recent ECJ judgment showed that data protection is still a developing legal regime – and should not be dealt with too carelessly. The same applies to the website, where especially user generated content might trigger a liability of the website owner and should therefore be dealt with carefully. Also here, recent judgments require chances with regard to the use of cookies and social plug-ins.
Almost all start-ups do not plan to run their business for the rest of their life but plan to exit it one day or another. Our cooperation partner Andreas Orbig presented the various possibilities how such an exit could take place: besides the quite common trade sale, he also explained the concept as well as the advantages and disadvantages of initial public offerings, secondary purchases, buy back/buy out, management buy outs and liquidations.
Stay tuned! We are working on a continuation of our series with deeper insights into the world of intellectual property rights, data protection, and beyond. Should there be any specific topics/questions that you think we should address in this regard, we would be pleased to hear from you at events.munich@gowlingwlg.com.