Vojetch Chloupek enjoys working with innovative, creative and technology-rich businesses. He has joined Bird & Bird in 2009, he head up the Intellectual Property and Tech & Comms Groups in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Although he has quite a broad focus, he mainly specialises in all aspects of intellectual property and technology law, whether contentious, commercial or regulatory. His expertise covers, for example, litigation over copyright, trade marks, designs and patents, fighting against counterfeit products, negotiating licence agreements as well as a variety of IT contracts, managing cross-border projects and advising on brand portfolios. He has also been assisting clients with numerous matters in the field of data protection, competition law and pharmaceutical, telecoms and broadcasting regulatory. He has been deeply involved with the following business sectors: aviation, consumer electronics, fashion, finance, gambling, media, life sciences and software. Being a technology lawyer, he currently takes immense interest in topics like artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data. Operating among the leading experts in intellectual property law in the Czech Republic, he has been awarded the Managing IP Star, been recognised by Who’s Who Legal and he is listed in the Gold Tier at the World Trademark Review. He is fluent in Czech and English.
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In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of complaints from competitors in the pharmaceutical sector, associations of pharmaceutical companies and the public, especially in relation to the distribution of medicines. The pharmaceutical sector was also subject to changes both at (...)
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The Office for the Protection of Competition (Office) recently applied an alternative solution to a potential competition issue related to vertical resale price agreements and customer restriction agreements. Although the Office discovered the existence of the agreements, it did not initiate (...)
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The Office for the Protection of Competition (“Office”) recently published an annual report summarizing its significant activities in 2020 and outlining the agenda for 2021. The most important areas are prohibited agreements, abuse of a dominant position and significant market power. In 2020, in (...)
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Currently, there are two bills being discussed in the Czech Parliament. Under the first bill, which implements the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) in the Czech Republic, the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (Office) would be entitled to require providers of public (...)
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The Czech Supreme Court lodged a request for a preliminary ruling (Case C-57/21) on 1 February 2021 regarding evidence disclosure under the EU Damages Directive 2014/104/EU. In the proceedings before Czech courts, a privately-owned transportation company RegioJet a.s. sued the state-owned (...)
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Leniency programmes and settlement procedures are commonly used by the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (“Office”). The leniency programme was used as a “soft law” by the Office since 2001 to promote discovery of unlawful horizontal agreements. As for the settlement procedure, it (...)
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The Czech Office for the Protection of Competition ("Office") published a press release (without publishing the full decisions yet) regarding the rejection of the appeal of the collecting society for music authors’ rights OSA - Ochranný svaz autorský pro práva k dílům hudebním, z.s. ("OSA"), and (...)
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Supreme Administrative Court decides on clearly disproportionate fines for unauthorized acquisition. In 2013, the company ARMEX Oil acquired an ownership interest in the company TRANSCARGO without notifying the Competition Protection Office ("Office") and awaiting its approval. Two years (...)
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The Czech Office for the Protection of Competition ("Office") published a press release on 16 July 2020 (without publishing the full decision yet) regarding a fine imposed for anti-competitive parking conditions for certain hybrid vehicles in paid parking zones in Prague. According to this (...)
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On 22 June 2020 the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (Office) published a press release (without publishing the full decision yet) regarding fines imposed for concluding and executing a prohibited cartel agreement regarding train projects Carpathia, Sylvania, and New Carpathia. (...)
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On 15 May 2020 the Council of the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic ("CAOS") changed the first-instance decision of the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic ("AOS") dated 3 February 2020 and imposed fines totalling of EUR 6,7 million for a cartel agreements between dealers of (...)
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Back in 2016 and 2017, two different groups of senators proposed that the Constitutional Court repeal the Czech Act No. 395/2009 Coll., on Significant Market Power ("Act"), or at least some parts of it. In general, the Act protects food suppliers from unfair practices by big retail chains. (...)
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Like many other public authorities, the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (the Office) has adopted several measures related to the social and economic consequences caused by COVID-19. In order to minimize personal contact, the Office has limited public access to the Office’s (...)
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On 6 February 2020, the Office for the Protection of Competition (the “Authority”) cleared the merger between competitors Moneta Money Bank and WÜSTENROT – stavební spořitelna a.s.. ní banka a.s.. The acquired companies mainly operate in the area of providing financial services relating to building (...)
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In a first-instance decision, the Office for the Protection of Competition ("Office") imposed a fine amounting to CZK 10,676,000 on the collective rights management organisation, Ochranný svaz autorský pro práva k dílům hudebním ("OSA"), for an abuse of a dominant position. The decision has been (...)
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Petr Rafaj, the Chairman of the Office for the Protection of Competition, rejected, by his final decision, the appeal brought by the company Booking.com B.V. ("Booking.com") and confirmed the fine amounting to CZK 8,336,000 imposed on the company for entering into prohibited vertical agreements (...)
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The Office for the Protection of Competition imposed a fine in amount of CZK 46,560,000 on trading chain MAKRO Cash & Carry ČR s.r.o. ("MAKRO") for violating the Act on Significant Market Power in the Sale of Agricultural and Food Products and Abuse thereof ("Act on Significant Market (...)
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The Office for the Protection of Competition allows a merger of three competitors – XLCEE-Holding Gmbh and companies Kika Nábytek, s.r.o. (Kika CZ) and Lambda Properties Czechia, s.r.o. (Lambda CZ), provided that structural obligations set out in order to maintain the effective competition are (...)
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On 23 May 2019, the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (“UOHS”) issued a decision approving AGROFERT a.s. ("AGROFERT") to take sole control over UB HOLDING a.s. and its subsidiary UNITED BAKERIES a.s., subject to a number of structural commitments which were accepted by the party to (...)
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AV Media ("AV Media"), a company suspected of bid-rigging, challenged the lawfulness of the dawn raid conducted at its premises. In the cited judgment, the scope of investigative powers of the Office for the Protection of Competition ("OPC") was scrutinised. During the dawn raid, the Office (...)
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On the 26 April 2019, the Office for the Protection of Competition ("Office") adopted its first-instance decision regarding four competitors operating on the grant consultancy market. In its decision, the Office imposed fines amounting to CZK 1,883,000 (approx. EUR 73,000) on the four (...)
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At the beginning of this year, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers issued Directive (EU) 2019/1 to "empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market" (the "ECN+ Directive"). The (...)
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On 18 December 2018, the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition ("Czech NCA") announced in a press release imposing a fine of in total CZK 8,336,000 (approx. EUR 322,000) on Booking.com for infringing the Act on the Protection of Competition by concluding illegal vertical agreements (...)
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A classic price-fixing arrangement typically takes the form of a cartel, i.e. a price fixing arrangement between competitors. Price fixing is also prohibited for companies in a vertical relationship (active at different levels of the supply chain such as a manufacturer and a retailer). In a (...)
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