Codes of Business Conduct and Ethics Charters are powerful tools for companies to foster and re-affirm their culture of integrity and their values, based on compliance with laws and regulations. These inward and outward-facing documents provide a framework of expectations for each of their employees, as well as on the other stakeholders, from shareholders to customers and suppliers. All business partners are on the same boat, sharing fundamental principles as responsible citizens such as trust and commitment to the environment and to society at large.

Intellectual property (IP) can have direct and indirect connections with compliance issues, as a vector of risk.  Think of counterfeiting or identity theft. Think of money laundering, where violation of IP ownership may help to easily launder proceeds of crime because of weak law enforcement and of the difficulty to determine the final destination of the financial flows. And, needless to say, digital innovations, such as Web3, add another layer of complexity.

Our guests explore the links between IP and the key challenges it raises for businesses in all economic sectors from a compliance perspective.  First, Nathalie Dreyfus, a French and European trademark attorney, is the founding partner of Dreyfus & Partners, an IP firm established in 2004 and based in Paris, France.  For the past 25 years, she has been advising clients in all areas of IP, from valorization to prosecution and enforcement matters in the real and virtual worlds.  Ms. Dreyfus is an academic, author of several works and articles, and the editor of the Dreyfus Blog on legal news related to trademarks, patents, copyrights, Internet, and new technologies.

Our second guest, Nathalie Sabek, has been since 2015 the head of Financial Security and Know Your Customer Policy at International Retail Banking of BNP Paribas, the leading bank in the European Union and a major international banking player with a presence in in 65 countries. She began her career as an IP professional and previously worked as head of Legal & Compliance at banks in Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

Related Resources

To go further:

About Nathalie Dreyfus

About Nathalie Sabek

Also of interest:

Cambridge University Press: The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance