UBA News

UBA Meeting with Craig Shank

On 31 March the Ukrainian Bar Association Committee on Telecom, IT & Internet Law organized a meeting with Craig Shank, Microsoft International chief legal adviser, and Olga Prokopovich, legal adviser of Microsoft Ukraine. Craig Shank is a vice president of the legal and corporate matters teams of Microsoft International, who manages the teams of Microsoft’s legal and corporate affairs in Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Asia Pacific, Japan and Latin America.

To start with Mr. Shank noted that technologies have already changed geopolicy and the role of lawyers inside it. The speaker paid special attention to the world practice of applying cyber security law and focused in detail on the situation in Brazil where police officers tried to force Microsoft employees to provide them with data of a criminal nature. The fact is that this information was held in the USA and not Brazil. By way of comparison, Mr. Shank gave the example of another incident that took place after the attacks in January 2015 on the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper in Paris, where Microsoft has to provide the FBI and French police with all information requested. The difference between these two incidents lies in the lawfulness of requirements from the authorities.

Craig Shank described the painful points of cyberterrorism, information exchange and stopped at the EU-US Privacy Shield, a sound, renewed framework for commercial data exchange.

One more interesting thing discussed during the meeting touched upon the pressure on American lawyers from law-enforcement authorities in connection with execution of their duties. In particular, the expert analyzed several cases from Microsoft’s New York practice.

UBA’s Inaugural IT Conference

The UBA Conference on IT Law was held on 8 April 2016 in Kiev. This event was the first specialized on IT Law conference which was organized by the Ukrainian Bar Association and brought together a record number of participants interested in IT.

The sensitive issues of recent searches across IT companies have attracted a lot of attention. Denys Ovcharov, business security practices partner of Juscutum explained what to do before, during and after the search. He outlined that it is very important to train personnel with regard to a possible search and be very cautious with employees. In their turn, Vyacheslav Kohlyakov, partner of Law Firm Dynasty, Elena Petrova, associate partner of ILF, provided colleagues and management of IT business with tips on how to prepare for the search, which legal instruments are used in work with investigators and how to seek the return of seized property.

Dmytro Gadomsky, CEO at Axon Partners, talked about the philosophy of Agile on which his company is based. Lawyers work in accordance with Agile-contracts for programmers that do not contain precise technical tasks and deadlines for their implementation. According to him, the main advantage for the customer is the ability to control the product at each stage of its development.

Olena Vardamatska, head of IP/IT practice at the Kiev office of Wolf Theiss, outlined that the main goal of the conference was to practice experience exchange. The speakers of her tax panel explained the specifics of cooperation with companies registered in different jurisdictions, the attitude of EU member states to hidden information on the ultimate beneficiary of offshore companies and presented factual data on tax concessions around the world. Sergey Orlov, IT-entrepreneur of the eTachki.com project recommended narrowing the search of potential investors to those who have a good understanding of IT projects.

Yuriy Kushnir, managing partner of Kushnir, Yakymyak & Partners, and Sergey Ovcharenko, senior counsel of Luxoft Ukraine, analyzed non-compete and non-soliсit provisions of employment contracts. Non-compete provisions state an employee’s commitment to refrain from employment with other companies that work in the same product and is additionally listed in details. Non-solicit provisions assume refrainment from enticement of employees. Despite the widespread use of these provisions in international practice, Ukrainian law considers these provision as discrimination against employees and violation of competition law.

Despite exclusivity and the narrow niche of IT law in Ukraine, a dedicated part of the legal community is very active in drafting legislation and lobbying the industry’s interests.