Van Eeckhoutte provides advisory and procedural legal aid in the field of Corporate law and in particular in the field of intellectual property rights and ICT/internet law. In addition, he is involved in legal advice for ICT projects.

Corporate law

Corporate law is an area of law which affects all owners of companies. For example transaction contracts. Trading without a contract is inconceivable. Contracts imply obligations, but are these obligations clear to all parties involved? From a commercial point of view, company owners benefit from a clear, written agreement, which should not however intimidate the customer. So, an expensive multi-page Agreement is not always what is wanted, nor one that fits on the back of a beer mat. A compromise? Possibly, but not necessarily. Van Eeckhoutte looks for a balance between your legal and commercial interests. A healthy balance in which doing business is still a pleasure.
He works in the following business related fields:

• Consultancy: assisting with:
  • types of organisation and take-overs/mergers, including the specification of liabilities and due diligence;
  • negotiating on and/or drawing up of clear sales contracts and suitable general terms and conditions (of supply);
  • labour law: issues relating to the health and safety, remuneration and dismissal;
  • corporate property law, including rental;
  • aspects of environmental law.
• Advising: well founded legal advice on agreements, covenants, letters of attorney, correspondence, retail/licence agreements plus addenda, declarations of intent, etc.;
• Legal opinion: legal position on behalf of (potential) trading partners about the existence of your partnership(s), the decision making process on which your transactions are based, choice of legal entity, practicability of judgements, etc.;
• Procedural law: effective legal counselling in the case of disputes, or mediation.

Intellectual property rights (IE)

Intellectual (property) rights form part of general competition law, aimed at maintaining open and fair competition between suppliers of services and product. Intellectual rights are 'products of the human mind'.
There is a series of laws aimed at protecting these products, which include creations, technical inventions, design, texts, databases etc. These laws regulate competition by - on the whole - granting exclusive and often universal rights to the rightful claimant of IE on his or her products. This obviously affects competition between suppliers. Consequently, the back-end-software of a website cannot simply be copied by anyone else . Or what about imitation of your product brand? Violations of such intellectual rights may lead to substantial damages and even criminal prosecution.

Intellectual rights consists of several areas, of which the following are covered by the legal practice:

• Copyright: the exclusive utilization right of the producer of a work of literature, science or art. This also covers software;
• Database rights: the exclusive extraction right of the producer of a database (applies not only to digital databases);
• Chips right: the exclusive right to a topography (layout) of a computer chip;
• Performing rights: exclusive exploitation right for record companies and broadcasting corporations;
• Patent law: the exclusive right to a new invention, which can be used in industry;
• Trade name law: the right to the name under which an enterprise runs its business;
• Brand and trademark law: the exclusive right to a distinguishing brand or trademark for services or goods and
• Drawing and design law: the exclusive right to the new appearance of a drawing or design that has a specific use.

ICT/internet law

ICT/internet law includes aspects of law not covered under intellectual rights (see above). Nevertheless, it is understandable that many people put typical intellectual property areas, such as copyrights or database rights together with ICT/internet law, as soon as there is a link with information technology or the internet. To help clarify this, here is a list of some of the topics typically covered by ICT/internet law as they form an important part of Van Eeckhoutte's practice:

• Regulating spam and e-stalking (electronic court injunctions);
• E-commerce and the legality of electronic transactions, in particular via the internet;
• Drawing up internet disclaimers. Click here if you want to place a free internet disclaimer on your webpages;
• Domain name protection;
• Internet privacy in the employer/employee relationship and
• Internet privacy with respect to the Data Protection Board.

ICT/internet law is based mainly on European rules and (related) rulings. Due to increasing technological developments, ICT/internet law is a dynamic area of law in which new legal insights, whether or not self-created, should be closely followed.

Legal ICT project consultancy

If builders of ICT applications believe in the proverb prevention is better than cure they will opt for legal ICT project consultancy. Legal ICT project consultancy provides clients with advice for the duration of the project. This includes the following activities:

• In the pre-contractual phase: advising on legal strategy;
• In the contractual phase:
  • advising on and negotiating contracts for automation systems, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation projects and benchmarking;
  • screening, design and creation of legal documents (legal opinions, declarations of intent, agreements etc.);
• Supporting the project manager, for example by identifying the legal points in the project and
• Mediation, negotiation and, if required, conducting a court case if major problems occur during the project or have resulted from it.