Germany / EU All advertising of prescription-only drugs to general public prohibited. In Germany, as in the rest of the EU, advertising for medicinal products is strictly regulated. Prescription-only medicinal products may be promoted only to healthcare professionals qualified to prescribe or supply them (Sec 10 Advertising of Medicines Act, HWG ). General advertising of…

Recent case law from the Austrian Supreme Court has helped clarify the role of the prescribing physician in pharmaceutical product liability cases. In the absence of clear guidance from the European Court of Justice , there has been some uncertainty in Austria – and in many EU Member States – on whether, in pharmaceutical product…

On November 7th, the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law hosted a roundtable discussion to advance the participants’ understanding about the advantages of regional arbitral institutions – such as VIAC in Austria or BAC in Serbia – over larger, international institutions. More than 70 lawyers, general counsel and members of the Belgrade law faculty listened to opening…

On September 27th, 2018, KNOETZL’s Bettina Knoetzl who, as the president of the Austrian Chapter of Transparency International, participated in a panel discussion on professional secrecy versus transparency.  The discussion was hosted by the Austrian Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology  (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Strafrecht und Kriminologie) at the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior.…

A Short Description of the Relevant Legal System for Litigation Parties Laws are based on codes and statutes. The Austrian legal system is a civil law system. Civil procedure is designed as an adversarial process with inquisitorial elements. The proceedings — and the judge — are to a huge extent bound by the arguments put…