CMS expands in Norway

With big deals fuel­ling re­cord levels of M&A activ­ity, a steady stream of in­nov­at­ive and dis­rupt­ive tech­no­lo­gies, new and in­creas­ingly com­plex reg­u­lat­ory chal­lenges and a thriv­ing start-up com­munity...

Plastics and pack­aging have at­trac­ted con­sumer, me­dia and le­gis­lat­ive in­terest over re­cent years with an ar­ray of laws be­ing pro­posed to in­centiv­ise be­ha­vi­our­al and design change. Sig­ni­fic­ant re­forms...

Frank­furt, 29 Ju­ly 2021

We live in a con­nec­ted glob­al en­vir­on­ment where the num­ber and com­plex­ity of in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions is ever in­creas­ing.  As a con­sequence, the policies and activ­it­ies in one area of the world can...

Wel­come to the CMS Ex­pert Guide to In­ter­im Meas­ures.The CMS Ex­pert Guide to In­ter­im Meas­ures is a tool for prac­ti­tion­ers and in-house coun­sel to gain an over­view of the in­ter­im meas­ures avail­able in their...

Pub­lic pro­cure­ment is a power­ful tool for gov­ern­ments try­ing to cre­ate dy­nam­ic, in­nov­at­ive and sus­tain­able mar­kets, eco­nom­ies and so­ci­et­ies. Ac­cord­ing to the European Com­mis­sion, “every year, over 250,000...

We are over 800 qual­i­fied real es­tate law­yers work­ing in real es­tate and con­struc­tion, span­ning 46 coun­tries and 75 cit­ies. The CMS Real Es­tate prac­tice is the largest real es­tate spe­cial­ist team in Europe and one of the biggest world­wide. Cli­ents are at the heart of our busi­ness; we put you first.Our em­phas­is is not just on be­ing great tech­nic­al law­yers but also on un­der­stand­ing our cli­ents and their busi­ness; you and what makes you spe­cial; build­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with you; and bring­ing you our know­ledge and ex­per­i­ence.We have been act­ive in real es­tate in our mar­kets for dec­ades, so we un­der­stand the cul­ture, the eco­nom­ic con­text, the loc­al leg­al con­text and the his­tory. Many of our col­leagues have worked in-house or on second­ments to cli­ents to fur­ther de­vel­op their know­ledge of the real es­tate sec­tor. We know it in­side out. That is why we are known for be­ing strong on ex­e­cu­tion and provid­ing con­cise, com­mer­cial and prag­mat­ic ad­vice.Most of us fo­cus full time on real es­tate and serve a cli­ent base of de­velopers, own­ers, oc­cu­pi­ers, con­struc­tion con­sor­tia, as­set man­agers and in­vestors, among oth­ers across all as­set classes.CMS has the largest real es­tate teams across three ma­jor European jur­is­dic­tions – the UK, France and Ger­many – and is the largest real es­tate spe­cial­ist team in Europe and one of the biggest world­wide.We work ef­fi­ciently both loc­ally and in­ter­na­tion­ally be­cause we know each oth­er: we meet face -to face, con­nect reg­u­larly, work on shared mat­ters, train to­geth­er and ad­here to the same stand­ards, tem­plates and pro­cesses, in­clud­ing pro­ject man­age­ment. That makes it easy to de­ploy mul­tidiscip­lin­ary teams – in­clud­ing funds, con­struc­tion, de­vel­op­ment, plan­ning, cor­por­ate, bank­ing, tax and in­solv­ency spe­cial­ists, or even not­ar­ies where it is al­lowed – with the sim­pli­city of a single point of con­tact, even at mul­tina­tion­al level.You will find out more about the great things we do for our cli­ents in the be­low sec­tion. Feel free to get in touch with the loc­al con­tacts for spe­cif­ic coun­try re­quests.

Wel­come to the 2021 sum­mer edi­tion of our In­ter­na­tion­al Dis­putes Di­gest, a bi-an­nu­al pub­lic­a­tion fea­tur­ing ana­lys­is and com­ment­ary on the key trends cur­rently shap­ing the glob­al dis­pute res­ol­u­tion mar­ket.As...

Last year, Google an­nounced the in­tro­duc­tion of its Pri­vacy Sand­box, an ini­ti­at­ive with a mis­sion to “cre­ate a thriv­ing web eco­sys­tem that is re­spect­ful of users and private by de­fault”. As part of this ini­ti­at­ive, Google has pledged to re­move sup­port for third-party cook­ies from its ad net­works and Chrome plat­form. From Google’s per­spect­ive, this is a pos­it­ive step for­ward: third party cook­ies are used to track users across the In­ter­net and their re­mov­al will make it more dif­fi­cult for ad­vert­isers to do this. In­deed, Google it­self states on its Ads and Com­merce Blog that “[p]eople shouldn’t have to ac­cept be­ing tracked across the web in or­der to get the be­ne­fits of rel­ev­ant ad­vert­ising. And ad­vert­isers don't need to track in­di­vidu­al con­sumers across the web to get the per­form­ance be­ne­fits of di­git­al ad­vert­ising”.So, what does this mean for ad­vert­isers who still want to tar­get users? Well, Google will re­place its sup­port for third-party cook­ies with an AI sys­tem called the Fed­er­ated Learn­ing of Co­horts (or “FLoC”) which (as ex­plained by the Elec­tron­ic Fron­ti­er Fed­er­a­tion):…uses your brows­ing his­tory from the past week to as­sign you to a group with oth­er "sim­il­ar" people around the world. Each group re­ceives a la­bel, called a FLoC ID, which is sup­posed to cap­ture mean­ing­ful in­form­a­tion about your habits and in­terests. FLoC then dis­plays this la­bel to every­one you in­ter­act with on the web. This makes it easi­er to identi­fy you with browser fin­ger­print­ing, and it gives track­ers a head start on pro­fil­ing you.Thus, in­stead of identi­fy­ing users in­di­vidu­ally, Chrome will place users in­to co­horts based on their brows­ing habits and al­low ad­vert­isers to tar­get their ads to these co­horts, rather than in­di­vidu­als. This means that ads will be de­livered to users in a more an­onym­ous way, without (ac­cord­ing to Google) in­hib­it­ing the abil­ity of ad­vert­isers to de­liv­er those ads in a tar­geted way. So, every­one is happy, right?Well, no - not every­one is ex­cited by this pro­pos­i­tion. In­deed, crit­ics have warned that the use of FLoC by Google still means that users will be tracked to some ex­tent while they browse on­line. Fur­ther, there is con­cern that group­ing users in­to co­horts could res­ult in dis­crim­in­a­tion again cer­tain groups if, for ex­ample, sens­it­ive at­trib­utes (such as race, sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion, dis­ab­il­ity, etc) are used as the basis for group­ing. It is also worth re­mem­ber­ing that Google has only com­mit­ted to re­move sup­port for third-party cook­ies; its sup­port for first-party cook­ies will con­tin­ue.In ad­di­tion to the pri­vacy con­cerns, the UK’s Com­pet­i­tion and Mar­kets Au­thor­ity (“CMA”) has launched an in­vest­ig­a­tion in re­la­tion to the Pri­vacy Sand­box to as­sess wheth­er the changes could cause ad­vert­ising spend to be­come even more con­cen­trated on Google’s eco­sys­tem at the ex­pense of com­pet­it­ors.  With the CMA in­vest­ig­a­tion and these oth­er cri­ti­cisms, Google has now an­nounced that it is delay­ing the full im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Pri­vacy Sand­box un­til late 2023.  In the mean­time, Google is still tri­al­ling FLoC in se­lec­ted coun­tries so we will have to wait and see how ef­fect­ive it is as a pri­vacy-pre­serving al­tern­at­ive for both users and ad­vert­isers alike.