Stéphanie De Smedt, attorney at law, is a member of the Litigation & Risk Management practice group in our Brussels office. She is head for Belgium of the IP/IT & Commercial Contracts Team, the Data Protection Team and the Life Sciences Team.
Stéphanie is an expert in intellectual property law (technology transfers, trademark and copyright licensing and counterfeit matters), ICT law (e-commerce, telecom, software and other Internet-related contracts) and privacy and data protection. She has a particular focus on GDPR compliance, the structuring of (cross-border) data flows, and large scale “privacy by design” projects. She also regularly advises clients active in the life sciences industry in data protection related matters and assists them with the drafting and negotiation of commercial contracts. Her commercial contracts expertise covers both B2B and B2C relationships. Stéphanie represents clients in court, before the Belgian Data Protection Authority and in alternative dispute resolution proceedings in her areas of expertise. She has furthermore been appointed by CEPANI, the Belgian Centre for Arbitration and Mediation, to act as Third-Party Decider in alternative dispute resolution proceedings for .be domain names. Stéphanie is teaching assistant at the Centre for IP & IT Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). She regularly publishes articles, speaks at conferences and (internal and external) seminars, and participates as a legal expert to hackathons focussing on the use of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.