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The NOVAGRAAF GROUP (“NOVAGRAAF”) is an international law firm providing intellectual property (IP) advice. NOVAGRAAF is composed of a network of affiliates in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. Click here for more details of how to contact our firms in your jurisdiction.

Novagraaf is careful to protect your privacy and to maintain the strictest confidentiality of the personal data that it collects from you and processes.

To that effect, NOVAGRAAF complies with European data protection law, in particular the European General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation No 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 (GDPR).

This Privacy Policy (“privacy policy”) is intended to give the people concerned clear, simple and full information about how NOVAGRAAF, as data controller, collects and uses your personal data ("personal data") and the means available to you to control that use and exercise your rights in relation to it.

In particular, the privacy policyt describes how NOVAGRAAF collects and processes your personal data in the context of your visits to our website or other exchanges with us by email or by the post, in the context of our carrying out our role as representatives or counsels in IP, and in the context of our business relations with our clients or fellow professionals, or in the context of all other occasions on which you transmit your personal data to NOVAGRAAF, especially when you subscribe to our newsletter or at professional events.

  • 1. Collection of your personal data
  • 2. The purpose of processing your personal data
  • 3. Sharing of personal data
  • 4. Keeping your personal data secure
  • 5. Your rights
  • 6. Contact us
  • 7. Changes to this policy

1. Collection of your personal data

NOVAGRAAF may need to collect your personal data interacting with you directly:

  • When you contact us, via our website or by email or letter, to request a service or advice;
  • When you subscribe to our corporate newsletter, via our website;
  • When you come to our offices or take part in events organised by NOVAGRAAF or other professional events;
  • When we are sent speculative applications or replies to job advertisements.

We also collect and process personal data on a daily basis in the context of our advisory activities and business relations with our clients and professional colleagues. This statement does not apply to NOVAGRAAF employees.

NOVAGRAAF does not collect any personal data in the special categories listed in Article 9(1) of the GDPR, i.e. personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

The personal data which we collect are:

  • Title;
  • Surname;
  • First name;
  • Function;
  • Phone number;
  • Fax number;
  • Email address;
  • Postal address;
  • Payment related details;
  • Data included in CVs.

NOVAGRAAF upholds the principles of “data minimisation", “data protection by design" and "data protection by default “. We only collect information which is relevant, appropriate and limited to what is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed.

You are free to provide, or not provide, some or all of your personal data. However, the personal data you choose not to provide may limit your access to certain products or services offered by NOVAGRAAF.

2. The purpose of processing your personal data

The personal data collected by NOVAGRAAF undergo computer processing intended to manage your request and ensure that it is followed up. The data recipients are the people responsible for receiving requests sent to NOVAGRAAF via its website, and the people best able to respond to your request, depending on the kind of request.

NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data in the situations permitted by the applicable rules, for some of the following purposes:

  • In order to perform any contract you have concluded with NOVAGRAAF. For example: NOVAGRAAF inputs your information into the database so that a trademark, model or patent can be registered or so that we can negotiate with a third party on your behalf;
  • When you ask NOVAGRAAF a question using the contact form on our website, in order to answer that question;
  • If you have subscribed to our newsletter (’Perspectives’), in order to send you the NOVAGRAAF newsletter;
  • If you answer a job advertisement or send a speculative application, so that NOVAGRAAF can reply and potentially reuse those data at the time of the recruitment procedure;
  • When you sign up for a seminar or event, so that you can be kept informed about seminars or events (both before and afterwards);
  • To invite you to take part in NOVAGRAAF client satisfaction surveys in order to improve our services;
  • If you have a request, in order to deal with it;
  • In order to comply with NOVAGRAAF’s legal and regulatory obligations.

NOVAGRAAF guarantees that your data will be processed lawfully in compliance with the requirements listed in Article 6 GDPR. According to that article, the processing of personal data is lawful to the extent that one of the following requirements is satisfied:

  • The processing is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract with NOVAGRAAF
    NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data so that it can perform a contract concluded with you. NOVAGRAAF also processes your personal data before concluding a contract, so that the contractual relationship can be entered into. In particular, NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data to respond to queries and information requests, received via our website’s contact form or by email, in relation to our services, to register you as a client, to send you specific offers when asked to do so, to process your payment information, or to respond to speculative applications or process applications for employment.  
     
  • Legitimate interests pursued by NOVAGRAAF or a third party
    NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data to pursue its legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of third parties. In particular, NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data where a client relationship has been established between NOVAGRAAF and you, to manage and develop this relationship. This includes providing legal and administrative services and any other services required for the performance of this relationship. This also includes communicating with you to keep you abreast of the latest corporate developments, news, and other information about NOVAGRAAF’s services, events, and other activities, to invite you to take part in client satisfaction surveys, to send you our newsletter as well as other occasional promotionnal information. On the basis of NOVAGRAAF’s legitimate interest, we also process your personnal date to manage access to our premises and for security purposes.
     
  • The data subject consents to NOVAGRAAF processing his or her personal data
    In specific cases, the processing of personal data is only allowed if you have provided NOVAGRAAF with your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time. When consent is required, NOVAGRAAF will only send you marketing related information after you have opted in to receive those communications. Moreover, NOVAGRAAF will ensure that it provides the opportunity for you to opt out at any time from these communications.
     
  • Compliance with NOVAGRAAF’s legal obligations
    NOVAGRAAF processes personal data in order to comply with its legal obligations. Those legal obligations are defined in national and/or international law and in national rules issued by the competent national supervisory authorities and can include maintaining records, compliance checks, or screening and recording for tax, social, or security objectives.

3. Sharing of personal data

As a global law firm, NOVAGRAAF may share the personal data it collects via its website internally with its offices in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United States.

NOVAGRAAF may employ the services of third parties to support us with certain tasks, such as internet technical support or marketing automation. In order to do so, we may also share your data with our third-party service providers, so that they can perform services on our behalf.

NOVAGRAAF uses service providers (e.g. translators, designers, website developers, etc.) who may also need to process the personal data strictly necessary to carry out the services we ask of them (assignment, electronic and postal dissemination, logistics, etc.).

NOVAGRAAF does not sell, lease, share, or otherwise transfer your personal data to third parties.

4. Keeping your personal data secure

NOVAGRAAF takes care to protect and secure your personal data in order to ensure that they are kept confidential, and to prevent them from being distorted, damaged, destroyed or disclosed to unauthorised third parties.

Under the applicable European rules, in the event that a personal data breach is found which is capable of causing a high risk to the rights and freedoms of data subjects, NOVAGRAAF will notify that breach to the competent national supervisory authority and, where required by the European rules, to the data subjects (individually or collectively depending on the circumstances).

NOVAGRAAF keeps your personal data for the time necessary to perform the agreed purposes, subject to its legal rights to archive some data, its obligations to keep certain data and/or to the fact that it can anonymise data.

In addition, the firm's website may offer links to third-party websites which may be of interest to you. NOVAGRAAF has no control over the contents of those third-party websites or what those third parties do with any personal data they may gather. NOVAGRAAF therefore cannot be held liable for the processing of your personal data by those third parties, which is not subject to the privacy statement. You are responsible for finding out about those third parties' data protection policies.

5. Your rights

Under Regulation (EU) No 2016/679 of 27 April 2016, from the time it comes into force on 25 May 2018, you will have rights of access, amendment, opposition and erasure over information about you, and the right to know and receive that information. You can exercise your rights by emailing info@novagraaf.com or writing to

Novagraaf Nederland B.V.
PO Box 22722 1100 DE AMSTERDAM

specifying in the subject line of the email or letter "Personal rights" and enclosing a copy of your identity document. You can also object to your data being processed and to your data being used for marketing purposes.

NOVAGRAAF undertakes to respond as soon as possible, and in any event within one month from receiving your request.

When necessary, that period may be extended by two months, having regard for the number and complexity of requests sent to NOVAGRAAF. Where that occurs, you will be informed of that extension and the reasons for it.

If NOVAGRAAF does not act on your request, it will inform you of the reasons for doing nothing and you will be entitled to make a complaint to a supervisory authority and/or to bring court proceedings.

  • Right to information about the processing of your personal data

NOVAGRAAF endeavours to provide you with concise, comprehensible and easily accessible information in clear and simple terms about how your personal data are processed.

  • Right of access, rectification and erasure of your personal data

The right of access enables you to obtain confirmation from NOVAGRAAF that your personal data are or are not processed, and where they are, to access them or obtain a copy of them.

You are also entitled to have NOVAGRAAF rectify your personal data, within 30 days.

Lastly, subject to the exceptions under the applicable law (e.g. retention of data necessary to comply with a legal obligation), you are entitled to request NOVAGRAAF to erase your personal data as soon as possible, where one of the following grounds applies:

  • Your personal data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or otherwise processed;
  • You wish to withdraw your consent where that consent was the basis for processing your personal data when there is no other basis justifying that processing;
  • You believe and are able to show that your personal data have been processed unlawfully;
  • Your personal data must be erased pursuant to a legal obligation.
  • Right to personal data portability

Where processing is based on your consent or on a contract, the portability right enables you to receive the personal data you have provided to NOVAGRAAF in a structured, commonly used format and to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from NOVAGRAAF.

Where it is technically possible to do so, you can request that those personal data be transmitted directly by NOVAGRAAF to another data controller.

  • Right to withdraw consent to the processing of personal data

Where NOVAGRAAF processes your personal data on the basis of your consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time using the means made available to you for that purpose. Under the applicable law, however, withdrawing your consent is not retrospective and cannot therefore affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.

  • Right to make a complaint to a supervisory authority

If, notwithstanding NOVAGRAAF's efforts to keep your personal data confidential, you believe that your rights have not been complied with, you have a right to make a complaint to a supervisory authority. You can find a list of supervisory authorities on the European Commission's website.

6. Contact us

If you have any questions or would like further information about the collecting or processing of your personal data by NOVAGRAAF, don't hesitate to contact us using the contact form or by writing to us at info@novagraaf.com.

7. Changes to this policy

NOVAGRAAF reserves the right to change its confidentiality and personal data protection policy. You can find the latest version on this page. We encourage you to look at this page regularly to make sure that you are still happy with our confidentiality policy. The last version was updated on 28 October 2018.

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