Profile details
About Gernot Fritz
Gernot is counsel in the Global Transactions group and co-heads the TMT practice in Vienna. He leads on data, data privacy, IT and IP related matters in cross-border M&A transactions, commercial collaborations, joint ventures and litigation.
Further to being an acknowledged expert in Austrian and European data law and data privacy law, Gernot specializes in assisting clients on the legal implications of the carve-out, separation, integration and transitional services aspects of transactions and joint ventures as well as on intellectual property transfer and license arrangements and long-term commercial arrangements in this regard.
Having an academic background in computer science as well (i.e. a bachelor degree in “software and information engineering” and a master degree in “computational intelligence”), Gernot has extensive experience in assisting multinational and domestic clients from many different business sectors on the legal implications of and setting-up data-driven or technology-driven innovation and digital projects as well as projects involving software, cloud services and legal tech.
Gernot advises clients in German and English.
Recent work
- Hutchison Drei Austria GmbH on the acquisition of Tele2 Holding GmbH, including the use of legal tech (i.e. KIRA) in the due diligence process to manage tight time constraints on the analysis of a large virtual data room;
- A leading German manufacturing company on the use and training of a technology assisted review (TAR) tool in course of a global internal investigation to efficiently and in a targeted manner analyze and review the document universe (containing more than 170 million documents) for specific questions and aspects relevant to the investigation;
- Numerous Austrian companies on data privacy-related aspects in getting ready for the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR);
- Numerous banks on data privacy aspects and structuring of the (international) sale of receivables, including setting up GDPR compliant data trustee structures;
- UniCredit Business Integrated Services in the extension of its multinational, high volume outsourcing of IT infrastructure to a joint venture formed with IBM, inter alia moving the outsourced services to a cloud environment;
- An Austrian company on the implementation of a data strategy and data governance.
Qualifications
- University of Vienna (Mag. iur.)
- University of Vienna (PhD in outer space law, Dr. iur.)
- The Vienna University of Technology (Software and Information Engineering, B.Sc.)
- The Vienna University of Technology (Computational Intelligence, Dipl.-Ing.)
- Rechtsanwalt (attorney at law), admitted to the Austrian bar