Dear Reader,

It’s half-time for 2019 – we want to use the opportunity to take a deep breath and take stock. Germany is quickly becoming a start-up country and, apart from residual issues, such as the fact that financing rounds are too small by international standards, our Start-up / Venture Capital Team has had much to do in the first half of 2019. We are very pleased with the strong growth in our sector and the great response we have received for our work. We would like to thank all of our clients, both old and new, for their trust in us. We enjoy working with you and are looking forward to helping you to make our business location more sustainable. Keep on pushing!

Unfortunately, we must admit that our newsletter has suffered somewhat as a result of our workload – that’s why we have a mid-year edition of our newsletter.

You can find the following articles in this issue of our newsletter:

• Tassilo Klesen, one of our colleagues from our Berlin office, looks at the buzzword “purpose” and how it can be legally secured.
• Next is an article by our colleague Dr Christian Gloger, who is a partner in the New York law firm of Kleinberg, Kaplan Wolff & Cohen. We asked him to tell us how and where to best raise capital in the US at the Moment.
• The article by Laureen Lee keeps our sights on the other side of the Atlantic. She looks at the ECJ judgment in Maximilian Schrems vs. Facebook Ireland Limited and the answer to the question of when personal data may be transferred to the USA.
• Christian Hess, one of our IP lawyers based in Munich, provides an overview of the new Trade Secrets Act.
• Our labour law duo, Dr Erik Schmid and Dr Michaela Felisiak have provided us with two articles for this issue. One looks at the important judgment of the ECJ of 14 May 2019 on monitoring working time. The second examines the practical question of whether it is sufficient for employees to send their employers a WhatsApp message to let them know that they are ill.
• We finish with an article by Christian Kalusa entitled “A short word about Vesting”. Too often over the last few months, we have been presented with clauses that initially have little to do with vesting. Christian clarifies several aspects.

Happy reading and thanks for sticking with us!

Best regards,
The BEITEN BURKHARDT Start-up / Venture Capital Team