Dr. Bernhard Tonninger

Bernhard Tonninger, born in Bad Aussee, founded the firm in Vienna in 2005 and has shaped its substantive focus on intellectual property ever since. He studied at the University of Graz with a research stay at Cornell Law School (USA), and obtained his doctorate in 1998. He completed his legal training at Schönherr Rechtsanwälte, with stations in Ljubljana and Zagreb.

In day-to-day work he concentrates on trademark, copyright and unfair-competition law (UWG); his advice goes beyond pure IP because he enjoys thinking strategically with clients and supporting them in entrepreneurial decisions. What he finds compelling about IP litigation is that optimal counsel — before the Vienna Commercial Court and the Austrian regional courts, as well as on appeal before the higher regional courts (OLG) and the Austrian Supreme Court (OGH) — can make the decisive difference.

Originally rooted in unfair-competition law, a specialist niche has emerged: the Austrian fixed book-price regime, which Bernhard Tonninger has decisively shaped over the last two decades. As the “fixed-book-price trustee” appointed by the WKO's Federal Association of the Book and Media Trade, he is not only the central point of contact on fixed-book-price questions, he is the author of the only commentary on the Austrian Fixed Book Price Act 2023 (BPrBG 2023) and has been involved over the last two decades in every significant court case on this topic in Austria — which, after two preliminary references from the Austrian Supreme Court, currently take him back to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

He accompanies the field academically: as co-author of the Manz comprehensive commentaries urheber.recht and marken.schutz and with regular case annotations on Austrian Supreme Court (OGH) decisions — especially in UWG matters — in the journal ecolex, where he has been a regular contributor for more than two decades.

His advice is not academic — it follows a commercial approach paired with exceptional strategic acumen: How can a trademark strategy be tailored optimally to the business model and the commercial possibilities? Which escalation step makes sense and is proportionate? Can court steps improve your negotiating position?