Serbia recently reworked its Law on Trademarks, coming into force on 1 February 2020. What has changed? In local parlance: “Everything and nothing”. The changes are not extensive, but concern key features of the local trademark rules.

Karanovic & Partners has advised Sweden's Backer AB on the acquisition of shares in Serbia's Elektrotermija d.o.o.

Dragan Karanovic has been made the new Managing Partner of Karanovic & Partners, taking over from Rastko Petakovic, who served as Managing Partner for the past three years.

Claims from Loan Agreements are generally secured by establishing a mortgage over a certain property on the basis of a Mortgage Agreement or a Pledge Statement.

CEELM: Run us through your background, and how you ended up in your current role with Karanovic & Partners.

The significance of medical devices is most certainly on the rise, considering not only its importance to patients, for whom medical devices represent life enhancing products, but also developments in innovation, economics, and in the regulatory and legal sphere. Issues such as data privacy in the field of medical devices were not noticeable until connectivity became a trend in medical devices and the GDPR was adopted. Similarly, the possibility of a cyber-attack on a medical device connected to the Internet became a possibility. Even though the question of product liability has always been present, recent decisions by the European Court of Justice provided new interpretations of existing legal terms and, importantly, introduced product batch liability. 

Concerns about how the legal profession will be impacted by the ongoing technological revolution are rampant across the industry. Artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technology (blockchain), and robots, among other things, are already altering the way lawyers serve clients in fundamental ways, and the influence of these new tools and technologies will almost certainly increase in years to come.

The Future is Now

“There are no major movements between firms, or any new firms popping up," says Petar Mitrovic, Partner at Karanovic & Partners in Belgrade, about the Serbian legal market. “There have been some movements, some partners leaving their law offices and moving to the private sector, but nothing worth writing home about."

Milica Savic, a former Senior Associate at Karanovic & Partners, has been promoted to Partner in the firm's Belgrade office.

Karanovic & Partners has advised NIBE Industries AB on its acquisition of the TIKI Group, Gorenje’s Serbian subsidiary. The TIKI Group was advised by the Zdolsek law firm.

Some might say that Serbia’s banking sector is blooming and steadily consolidating. Others may argue that actual consolidation is still far away. Either way, players on the local market are changing. This is clear now following the exit of Societe Genarale, BNP’s Findomestic, and two Greek banks, followed by the bold revamp of Hungary’s OTP and the strengthening of domestic investors such as AIK and Direktna Bank.

The wide usage of benchmark rates and their key role in the financial system requires that they be reliable and defiant to any manipulation. To ensure this, the EU undertook to reform the benchmark rate determination process and improve market confidence in them, resulting in the adoption of the EU Benchmarks Regulation (the BMR).

Karanovic & Partners has advised family-owned automotive industry supplier Brose on the acquisition of 23 hectares of land from the Republic of Serbia for the construction of a plant and a research center that will produce automotive equipment.

ODI Law has advised the Eta Invest Group on the refinancing of a development project encompassing 28 newly-constructed villas near Nova Gorica, Slovenia. The transaction included a transfer of claims held by various banking and non-banking entities to the Elements Capital Management investment fund, followed by the entrance into a Master Restructuring Agreement by Eta Invest Group and the investment fund. Karanovic & Partners advised Elements Capital Management.

At the moment, there is no generally applicable obligation to report a personal data security breach in Serbia. This type of obligation is currently envisaged only by certain sector specific laws such as the Law on Electronic Communications.

Karanovic & Partners acted as Serbian legal counsel for Vale Canada Limited on its acquisition of the option to earn-in in four of Mundoro Capital Inc’s exploration licenses in the Timok mining complex.

This April, the new EU foreign investment screening regulation entered into force, with terms scheduled to become applicable on October 11, 2020. The regulation was conceived and designed to provide member states with a valuable tool to employ in defending their strategic interests. We spoke to several experts in the region to learn more.