Fotini Kardiopoulis

Fotini Kardiopoulis, partner and co-founder of Dr Helen G Papaconstantinou and Partners, heads the firm’s anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy department. She holds a law degree from the University of Athens with first-class honours and an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She joined the Athens Bar in 1985 and has been admitted to practise before the Greek Supreme Court and the Council of State. She has also been a lecturer for 10 years at the Police Academy.

Since 1998 Ms Kardiopoulis has been handling a broad range of IP matters, with an emphasis on trademarks, plant breeder’s rights, contract drafting and reviewing, and alternative dispute resolution. She has extensive experience in IP litigation, devising and implementing anti-counterfeiting programmes, filing and administering customs actions, monitoring and enforcing IP rights online and advising on domain name disputes, consulting on licence and franchise agreements and copyright issues. In addition, she has conducted numerous significant seizures/raids, including preparatory investigations concerning various sectors, such as apparel, electric/electronic goods, toys, watchmaking and tobacco/cigarettes, often involving civil and criminal action in addition to customs procedures.

She is an active member of various associations, including the International Community of Breeders of Asexually Reproduced Horticultural Plant Varieties (CIOPORA), INTA and MARQUES. She is one of the very few attorneys specialising in plant varieties in Greece and the only Greek lawyer member of CIOPORA. In this context, she has given two presentations as an invited speaker at the CIOPORA Academy Workshop, which took place in Madrid in October 2018.

Ms Kardiopoulis frequently authors articles in her fields of expertise. Recent contributions include:

• Intellectual Property Country Comparative Guide: Greece, The Legal 500, June 2019;
• WIPR Annual 2019 – GREECE – Business Brief, World Intellectual Property Review, May 2019;
• GREEK LAW DIGEST – The Official Guide to Greek Law – Trademarks, Nomiki Bibliothiki, February 2019; and
• WTR Yearbook 2019/2020: A global guide for practitioners – a supplement to World Trademark Review, January 2019 .