Lovells

Gabriela Kennedy is a partner in the Intellectual Property, Media and Technology Group in the Hong Kong office, practising intellectual property law and information technology and telecommunications law.

She has handled all aspects of intellectual property work including enforcement, licensing and registration work. She has handled a number of high profile cases including a copyright infringement claim that went to the Court of Appeal in 1997 and ground-breaking litigation in Hong Kong on behalf of Microsoft in relation to the sale of mod-chips that enable the circumvention of copyright protection measures in Xbox consoles. Her IP practice includes Pan-Asian enforcement of IPRs and licensing (in particular patent licensing). Most recently, Gabriela and her team have handled company name hijacking cases in Hong Kong, devising a successful strategy to enforce court orders against company name hijackers. This strategy is now widely adopted by other legal practitioners in Hong Kong.

On the information technology side, Gabriela's particular expertise includes smart card projects, the regulation of encryption technology, data protection, software licensing and outsourcing as well as disputes relating to mod-chips and anti-circumvention devices.

Gabriela has advised on, drafted and negotiated various types of information technology and new economy agreements including systems integration agreements, software licence agreements, software and hardware maintenance agreements, source-code escrow agreements, click-wrap and shrink-wrap agreements, reseller agreements and application service provider agreements.

Gabriela has written over 150 articles on issues concerning intellectual properry, information technology, ecommerce, telecommunications law for various publications, such as "IP Forum", "Business and Technology Information Quarterly", "China Business Review", "Copyright World", "Computer Law and Security Report", "International Financial Law Review", "eLaw Asia", "European Intellectual Property Review" and "IP Asia". She is the Asia Regional Editor for "Computer and Telecommunications Law Review"; and also sits on the editorial board of "Computer Law and Security Report" for which she contributes a regular Pacific Rim news column. She has contributed chapters to a number of books. She co-authored the Hong Kong Halsbury Copyright Law.

She talks regularly at international conferences on information technology, e-commerce, telecommunications and intellectual property issues.

She has taught on the LLM in Information Technology and Telecommunications Laws at the University of Hong Kong and has designed the syllabuses for three modules of this course. She has lectured on the competition provisions in the Telecommunications Ordinance and on the proposed merger and acquisition regulation for the telecoms industry in Hong Kong. She was an online tutor for the LLM in Information Technology and Telecommunications Laws offered by Strathclyde University between January 2001 and August 2006.

She sits on the Management and Technology Committee of the Law Society of Hong Kong and is a Domain Name Panelist of WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) as well as a panelist with the Asian Domain Name Arbitration Centre. She is a member of the Asian Patent Attorneys Association's emerging rights committee, as well as a member of a number of other professional associations including INTA, iTechLaw (where she serves as China co-chair), and the HK Institute for Trade Mark Practitioners. She is also a member of prestigious international women leadership organisation, International Women's Forum (Hong Kong Chapter). She serves as Graduate Recruitment Partner in the Hong Kong office and Asia Diversity Partner.

Gabriela is widely recognised as an outstanding practitioner and has been named over a number of years in legal directories including "Chambers Global", "Asia Pacific Legal 500" and "Asia Law & Practice" as a leading individual in Intellectual Property, Communications and TMT practices.

She speaks English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian and Portuguese.