Clifford Chance has advised early-stage investor Mainincubator GmbH, a subsidiary of Commerzbank, on a single-digit million Euro seed funding for the Berlin-based software company Lana Labs GmbH.

Lana Labs develops software-based process optimisation tools for financial service providers. Vital legal aspects of the transaction were the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) and IT solutions.

Mainincubator invests in young technology companies or joint ventures in the financial sector and other innovation areas. Since 2013, the Commerzbank subsidiary has supported eleven other fintech start-ups. Clifford Chance also advises Mainincubator specifically on IP issues related to blockchain technology.

The Clifford Chance team advising MainIncubator included partners Claudia Milbradt (IP/Tech) and Oliver Kronat (Banking and Finance) as well as associate Günter Barth (IP/Tech, Dusseldorf), counsel Nele Gorny (Corporate, Frankfurt) and senior associate Christopher Fischer (Employment/Pensions, Frankfurt).

Clifford Chance regularly advises companies both within and outside the technology scene on legal issues of digitization. The firm coordinates its technology-related consulting know-how in a worldwide partner group that includes, among others, Düsseldorf-based IP specialist Claudia Milbradt. Among oth-ers, Clifford Chance recently advised Deutsche Telekom, Audi, BMW, Daimler or FairSearch Europe, a consortium of several large IT companies, on technology-related transactions and topics such as cloud computing services, broadband networks, second generation outsourcing or an antitrust investigation in the IT market.