Insights

The goal and purpose of this Playbook are to provide startup founders and startup lawyers alike with a quick reference guide to key issues they may experience in foreign jurisdictions. Let’s face it, the modern startup is not concerned with owning the local geography, but instead wants to step out onto the world stage as early as possible. Oftentimes, this means that the need for foreign legal advice comes well before theresources which their institutional, established competitors can bring to bear. Enter the Playbook. This is not meant as a definitive guide to everything you’ll need to know about legal systems and local market realities in any given jurisdiction, but it is intended to help triage key issues. Whether you’re using this guide as a lawyer advising a startup client, or as a startup company yourself, our hope is that the Playbook will help you to better assess potential risks and to ask the right questions. And if you have need of a local legal expert, well now you’ve got a list of lawyers from around the world that deal with startups just like yours, that are ready and willing to help.

It is well established in the jurisprudence of the SCC that the contract for assignment of future claims is null and void for lack of subject matter on the basis of Article 26(2) of the Obligations and Contracts Act due to the indeterminability of future claims. In his article published in the Commercial and Obligation Law Magazine, Asen Stefanov criticizes this thesis, as it limits the civil turnover and risks that the effects of the blank/global collateral assignment contract, which is widely used in foreign jurisdictions, will not be recognized in Bulgaria, whereby the assignor transfers all its present and future claims from third parties - its debtors, as a form of security for its obligations to the assignee - its creditor. *This publication is in Bulgarian.

On 2 March 2023, the draft Act for amendment and supplement to the Criminal Code was published on the Public Consultations Portal. The deadline for public discussion (submission of statements by interested parties) was 3 April 2023. The newly proposed provisions would allow for the prosecution of individuals who create conditions for online piracy. This includes individuals who develop and maintain torrent tracker sites, web platforms, chat groups in applications for online exchange of pirated content, and other similar activities. *This publication is also available in German and French.

The competent authorities for the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the protection from threats to public order and security and their prevention (police and criminal activity) process a number of personal data for a diverse range of subjects - suspects, accused, convicted persons, witnesses (including protected witnesses), victims of crimes, undercover agents and many others. Protecting their personal data from unauthorized or unlawful processing and from accidental loss, destruction or damage is a key prerequisite for the normal and lawful police and criminal activity. Moreover, compromising the security of this data is likely to endanger the lives, health, rights and freedoms of these and other individuals. Therefore, the competent authorities are called upon to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures for the security of these personal data. This paper aims to explore some basic data security guarantees enshrined in EU and Bulgarian law, in particular Directive 2016/680 and the Personal Data Protection Act.

On 1 February 2023, the Code of Conduct on Measures to Assess, Label and Restrict Access to Programmes which are Harmful or Pose a Risk to Affect Adversely the Physical, Mental, Moral and/or Social Development of Children – the Code) entered into force. The Code was adopted by CEM pursuant to Decision No. RD-05-7 dated 12 January 2023. The Code has been prepared jointly by the Council for Electronic Media – CEM and the Association of Bulgarian Radio and Television Broadcasters (ABBRO), the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) in accordance with the Radio and Television Act.