Germany: Technology

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer's Frankfurt Corporate Crime & Investigations team hosted a conference examining cybercrime threats, AI-driven attacks, and the evolving responsibilities of corporate leadership in building cyber resilience. Senior representatives from law enforcement, industry leaders, and global legal partners explored prevention strategies, incident response protocols, and the complex liability landscape facing organizations in an increasingly digital threat environment.

The European Central Bank has issued an urgent directive to major financial institutions requiring comprehensive action plans to counter rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats powered by frontier artificial intelligence models. With an October 2026 deadline looming, banks must demonstrate concrete measures across vulnerability management, monitoring capabilities, and third-party risk controls as AI-enabled attacks compress the timeline between threat discovery and exploitation. This supervisory escalation s

The European Patent Office Board of Appeal examined whether mathematical steps for generating points on elliptic curves can contribute to technical character in cryptographic applications. The central question was whether designing a constant-time execution method to prevent timing attacks on secret parameters constitutes a technical effect, or remains merely an abstract mathematical exercise.

The European Patent Office Board of Appeal examined whether a helicopter maintenance system using data clustering and mission-type modeling could be patented. The case centered on whether abstract statistical modeling methods applied to technical sensor data produce a credible technical effect sufficient to support inventive step under European patent law.

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer's Frankfurt Corporate Crime & Investigations team hosted a conference examining cybercrime threats, AI-driven attacks, and the evolving responsibilities of corporate leadership in building cyber resilience. Senior representatives from law enforcement, industry leaders, and global legal partners explored prevention strategies, incident response protocols, and the complex liability landscape facing organizations in an increasingly digital threat environment.

The term “offering” must be interpreted autonomously and in an economic sense. It is sufficient to present an item so that a viewer can make an offer to acquire it (invitatio ad offerendum). Thus, neither price indication nor ability to deliver is required. The Court expressly extended the CoA’s ruling in Belkin v. Philips (UPC_CoA_534/2024) and held that this principle can also be applied to the concept of “offering” in Art. 25(b) and (c) and Art. 26 UPCA.

The European Banking Authority and New York State Department of Financial Services have signed a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding establishing a formal framework for transatlantic supervisory cooperation on stablecoin regulation. This agreement enables structured information exchange, cross-border inspections, and emergency coordination between EU and US regulators overseeing entities engaged in stablecoin activities under MiCAR and New York's regulatory framework.

The European Commission has launched dual consultations on the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR), seeking feedback from both retail users and industry stakeholders on whether the regulation remains fit for purpose. Key areas under review include the treatment of decentralized finance, stablecoins, crypto-asset service providers, NFTs, tokenised deposits, and the private-law treatment of tokens, with responses due by 31 August 2026.

The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, commonly known as MiCAR, introduced a comprehensive framework for the regulation of crypto-assets across the EU, including detailed requirements...