We advise companies, startups, and strategic partners on the legal structuring, review, and implementation of cooperation and partnership agreements. Our focus is on defining unclear roles, contributions, economic interests, and exit scenarios. We establish clear contractual frameworks, assess risks, and help translate business objectives into practical and robust provisions.
Unclear Responsibilities
Cooperation and partnership agreements often lack clear provisions regarding which party is responsible for which tasks and risks. We analyze roles, contributions, and dependencies, and ensure that responsibilities are transparent and aligned with the actual business model.
Liability and Risk Allocation
Liability clauses often determine the financial implications of a contract only when a dispute arises. We review the scope of liability, exclusions, limits, and indemnification provisions, and compare them with the specific risks and insurance coverage.
Performance and Consideration
Vague service descriptions lead to differing expectations. We help define services, compensation, deadlines, obligations to cooperate, and quality requirements in a way that facilitates operational implementation and subsequent enforcement.
Amendment and Termination
Business models and projects evolve. That is why cooperation and partnership agreements must also address adjustments, termination, transfer, and exit. We review whether the mechanisms for making changes and the consequences of termination are practical and whether critical dependencies are adequately addressed.
We advise companies, startups, and strategic partners on drafting, reviewing, and negotiating cooperation and partnership agreements. In doing so, we ensure that roles, contributions, decision-making processes, economic interests, and exit scenarios are clearly defined from the outset.
We establish the framework for our collaboration and define how decisions are made, responsibilities are assigned, and conflicts are escalated. Clear governance is crucial, especially for long-term collaborations.
We define what services and resources each partner contributes to the collaboration and what obligations to participate exist.
We design the economic mechanisms for cooperation and establish how costs, revenues, and economic opportunities are distributed among the partners.
Collaborations often result in new products, technologies, or other work products. We establish which rights the partners bring to the collaboration and who owns the newly created work products or has the right to use them.
We structure the allocation of risk among the partners and, depending on the nature of the collaboration, take into account data protection, regulatory requirements, and the handling of confidential information.
Partnerships can change or come to an end. That is why we establish right from the start how a withdrawal, termination, or the end of the partnership should be handled.
Cooperation agreements only work if the legal structure aligns with the actual nature of the collaboration. We therefore take into account not only individual contract clauses, but also the business model, the partners’ contributions, economic interests, and operational processes.
Especially in long-term partnerships, it is crucial to determine who is authorized to make which decisions and how to proceed when interests differ. We structure roles, responsibilities, approval requirements, and escalation mechanisms in a way that ensures the partnership remains effective.
Many collaborations involve existing expertise or lead to new products, technologies, or other deliverables. We ensure that existing rights, joint developments, and rights of use and exploitation are clearly defined from the outset.
Compensation, revenue sharing, cost allocation, or profit-sharing arrangements should be commensurate with the partners’ actual value creation. We help ensure that economic mechanisms are reflected in the contract in a way that is transparent and practical.
Partnerships evolve. That is why, right from the start of the contract, we address what happens to customers, data, intellectual property, and ongoing projects in the event of disagreements, a partner’s withdrawal, or the end of the partnership.
Cooperation agreements often involve strategically important business relationships. We prioritize the issues that are truly relevant to long-term collaboration and risk sharing, and help facilitate viable solutions between the partners.
