Intellectual Property and Technology Expert Petteri Günther Joins Castrén & Snellman

Prior to joining Castrén & Snellman, Petteri worked as senior legal counsel at Elisa. Before his position at Elisa, Petteri practiced law in the private sector for over 10 years.

Petteri has also been active in academia: he has completed master’s degrees in law at both the University of Helsinki and Stockholm University, and also holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki. Petteri’s PhD thesis was on digital content distribution and copyright in the information society. He has also been a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford and visiting scholar at Stanford Law School as well as a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law.

‘I am excited to go back into private practice. There will be many familiar faces at Castrén & Snellman, but I am also looking forward to meeting new colleagues and taking on interesting projects and clients’, Petteri says.

The Intellectual Property and Data & Technology teams are happy to welcome Petteri.

‘We will benefit from Petteri’s extensive expertise in intellectual property rights and technology. His versatile background in the private sector, business and academia make him an excellent counsel for our clients in matters relating to new technologies and business models – and a great colleague’, says Partner, Head of IP Sakari Salonen.

‘Petteri has a strong background as an IP and tech attorney and particular expertise in the regulation of technology and the legal aspects of digitalisation. We are glad to have a very versatile lawyer like Petteri on our team’, says Partner Kim Parviainen.

We must take a deeper look at developments in data and technology – new regulation is not always required

Having worked in the audio-visual, music and game industries, Petteri has had a clear view into how copyright and regulation issues have changed in recent years.

‘Copyright was first introduced to protect original literary or artistic works, but today copyright is at the core of many fields such as software development. At the same time for instance the entertainment industry has increasingly become service-based: it is no longer about distributing copies of individual works but giving access to those, of which streaming services are a good example. Similar development is happening in other fields as well, such as the automotive industry.’ 

Changes in the markets have given rise to increasing regulatory changes. The European Union in particular has introduced a lot of new regulation. Petteri is critical of new regulation without clearly defined objectives and thorough impact assessments: before enacting new legislation there should be a clearer idea of what societal problem the legislation would address and how it would solve that problem, including how the legislation would impact markets in practice.

Petteri also stresses that new phenomena may not always require new regulation.

‘New phenomena often have their roots in concepts that are already established in the market, and the existing regulation may be fit for tackling new challenges. That is why it is important to look past the surface level when it comes to new phenomena.’ 

Castrén & Snellman’s Intellectual Property team is one of Finland’s leading and most experienced IP practices. Our versatile team of lawyers and experts covers every area of IP, from protection to commercialisation and enforcement. Our expertise and the solutions we provide have repeatedly been acknowledged in the top tier by international directories such as Chambers Europe and Global, Legal500, Managing IP, World Trademark Review and IAM Patent 1000.