Bettina Komarnicki
LL.M. (Kent)
Lawyer / Associate Partner
Eschersheimer Landstraße 25-27
60322 Frankfurt am Main

Bettina Komarnicki is a proven expert in the fields of IT law, software law, copyright law, competition and trademark law, licensing and distribution law, and data protection law. She assists clients in drafting and negotiating complex contracts and introducing new business models, and represents them in and out of court. Her clients include leading international IT service providers, the public sector, small and medium-sized companies and start-ups.

  • Expertise
    • IT contract law / outsourcing

      FPS advises in all areas of IT contract law. Whether clients need support in drafting and negotiating IT project contracts, designing and running outsourcing projects or making use of cloud services – we are on hand to help with our experts. In addition to many years of experience in advising a wide range of industries and companies of all sizes, our team has a real technical affinity and a special degree of creativity. This gives us a good technical understanding of our clients’ concerns and business models and enables us to find the best solution for them. Our services include drafting and negotiating IT project contracts (agile, classic, managed services, new business models), outsourcing contracts, service descriptions, service level agreements and pricing plans, and helping clients to prepare for due diligence processes, vendor conferences and on-site visits. We also oversee project and system integration measures as well as hardware and software maintenance and draft licensing, escrow and distribution agreements.

    • IT litigation / mediation

      In many cases, carefully drawn-up project contracts protect the parties from disputes. Due to the content and complexity of IT projects, however, disputes cannot be completely ruled out. We help our clients to get troubled projects back on track by finding sensible solutions. If necessary, we also support them when asserting their rights (judicially) or defending against claims.

    • Data (protection) law

      Digitalisation unlocks new opportunities for companies and creates space for future-oriented and scalable business models. Data has become the most valuable currency in the digital world. Data protection law – or now data law – is a separate advisory field at FPS rather than a mere annex to other areas of law. FPS helps companies to devise future-proof and legally compliant data usage concepts so that they can achieve their goals when using new technologies: innovation and data protection – when understood correctly – needn’t contradict one another. The GDPR with its drastic fines has significantly increased the risks for companies. FPS establishes what a company is permitted to do with the data and ensures compliance with data protection requirements in a pragmatic way by setting up a data protection management system, which, among other things, includes records of processing activities, data protection policies, data protection information, deletion and authorisation concepts, data protection impact assessments, processes for dealing with information and deletion requests from data subjects and much more besides. And if penalty proceedings are initiated, we defend our clients’ rights against the supervisory authorities. We also provide external data protection officers for our clients – for data protection from one single source.

    • Artificial intelligence

      Artificial intelligence (AI) is influencing more and more areas of life and the economy. AI has been a ‘hot topic’ since the advent of ChatGPT. The potential is huge – so the time has come to get to grips with the legal parameters of AI. This includes, for example, protecting AI-generated works and avoiding copyright infringements by texts, images and software created by AI, not to mention any liability issues, data protection implications and the need to find a sensible approach to handling training and production data. FPS ensures that AI applications are legally compliant. We draft contracts, protect intellectual property and help to uphold ethical standards. In the event of any conflicts, we are our clients’ first line of defence. We also hold training courses on the subject of AI for our clients and their employees, together with leading AI consultants on request.

    Language skills

    German English
  • Education
    since 2010Associate Partner at FPS 
    since 2000Lawyer at FPS 
    1996–1999Lawyer at Clifford Chance, Frankfurt
    1994–1996Lawyer at Wessing Berenberg-Gossler Zimmermann Lange (now Taylor Wessing), Frankfurt
    1994Admission to practise law in Germany 
    1993Second state law exam
    1990–1993Legal internship at KG Berlin (highest state court)
    1990Legal Affairs Manager at Orbit Software Ltd. (London, UK)
    1988–1989LLM in International Commercial Law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England
    1988First state law exam
    1981–1987Law studies at the Freie Universität Berlin
  • Memberships
    • Deutsche Gesellschaft für Recht und Informatik (DGRI)
    • Deutsche Vereinigung für gewerblichen Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (GRUR)
    • ITechLaw - International Technology Law Association
  • Publications
    Bettina Komarnicki
    Webhosting-Verträge
    Hoeren /Sieber (Hrsg.), Handbuch Multimedia Recht, Loseblatt-Sammlung, München (bis 2010), , S. 2001ff
    Bettina Komarnicki
    Character Merchandising in Germany
    John N. Adams, Character Merchandising, Butterworths Verlag, London, 2. Aufl., 1996
  • What others say

    "Super pragmatic and extremely fast, a perfect advisor all round" 
    (client, JUVE Handbook 2023/2024 | IT Law)

    "Excellent, extremely pleasant, also fair and solution-orientated on the other side" 
    (competitor, JUVE Handbook 2021/2022 | IT Law) 

Awards

JUVE Handbuch Recommended Lawyer for IT
since 2003
Best Lawyers | Handelsblatt Leading in Intellectual Property Law
since 2008
Best Lawyers | Handelsblatt Leading in Information Technology Law
since 2008