Schmidt-Gabain

Areas of Expertise

SCHMIDT-GABAIN supports you in the following areas:

Art and entertainment law also includes, in particular, copyright, foundation and inheritance law.

Art Law

In art law, SCHMIDT-GABAIN supports you in the following areas in particular:

  • Drafting contracts and handling transactions ( sales, loans, donations)
  • Cases of forgery and fraud
  • Dealing with artworks of challenging provenance (artworks seized as a result of Nazi persecution and artworks removed during the colonial era)
  • Copyright law
  • Foundation and association law
  • Insurance and transport disputes
  • Import/export
  • Disputes between artists and galleries
  • Trade mark law
  • Enforcement or defence of inheritance claims
  • Estate planning and administration (see also below)

In addition to works of fine art, the area of "art" also includes other unique objects such as vintage cars, jewellery, watches, wine and rare musical instruments.

Entertainment Law

In entertainment law, SCHMIDT-GABAIN supports you in particular in the following areas:

  • Enforcement or defence of copyright claims
  • Drafting of contracts (licence agreements, publishing agreements, production agreements, band takeover agreements, concert agreements, sponsorship agreements, advertising agreements, etc.)
  • Purchase and sale of music rights catalogues
  • Drafting of general terms and conditions
  • Review of existing contract portfolios (in particular for musicians, writers, labels and publishers)
  • Disputes with collecting societies (SUISA, Swissperform, pro litteris etc.)
  • Sponsoring
  • Ticketing (contracts with visitors, contracts with ticket brokers, action against secondary ticket trading, etc.)
  • Personal rights (privacy and confidentiality, right to one's own image, right to one's own voice)
  • Trade mark law
  • Enforcement or defence of inheritance claims
  • Estate planning and administration (see also below)

Strategic Estate Planning

In the area of strategic estate planning, SCHMIDT-GABAIN offers you a comprehensive portfolio of services, with a special focus on artistic estates (fine arts, music, literature, film, architecture & design). We develop customised solutions to ensure that your estate remains relevant and prosperous in the future. For heirs, we review existing estate structures to ensure they are efficient and future-orientated.

We focus as much on economic and artistic issues as we do on legal ones.

In particular, SCHMIDT-GABAIN offers you the following services:

  • Development of an estate vision from an economic and artistic perspective (with the help of additional experts if need be)
  • Legal realisation of the estate vision
  • Development of suitable organisational structures for the administration of the estate
  • Finding suitable administrators of the estate
  • Review of existing estate structures
  • Interim management of artistic estates
  • Mediation between different estate parties
  • Enforcement or defence of inheritance claims