Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Swiss Team

We'd missed this detail earlier, but Bonnie D Ford's Oct 11 article on the appeal identifies the Swiss Attorneys involved with the Landis appeal:

Landis recently traveled to Switzerland to meet with Zurich-based lawyers Alessandro Celli and Lucien Valloni. The pair represented Landis' now-defunct Phonak team in a successful 2004 appeal before CAS.

[MORE]


From the website of their Law Firm, we get a biography of Celli:

Dr. Alessandro L. Celli

Alessandro L. Celli has been a partner in our Zurich office since 1998. He is Head of our Competition Group and Co-Head of our IP & Technology Group.

Alessandro is experienced in all aspects of IP and technology related national and international transactions (JVs, license agreements, patent pooling, research collaborations, distribution, sale and purchase of technology businesses and marks/brands). He also advises on business restructuring and is member of the board of various Swiss operative companies. He practices competition law and intellectual property law, both contentious and non-contentious. He has published extensively in these fields. Sports law and entertainment law, be it media or sponsoring are further passions in Alessandro’s practice.

Alessandro obtained his law degree from the University of Zurich in 1987 and his PhD in 1993. He is a former lecturer at the University of Fribourg. His working languages are German and English.

Alessandro is a member of the following professional associations: Zurich Bar Association, Swiss Bar Association, American Bar Association (ABA), Swiss Association of Competition Law, Association Suisse pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle (AIPPI), International Trademark Association (INTA) and Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA).



Competition
Corporate / Commercial
Insolvency / Restructuring
Intellectual Property
M&A / Transactions
Sports
TMT

Zurich Office

Publications


and of Valloni:

Dr. Lucien W. Valloni

Lucien W. Valloni has been a partner in our Zurich office since 2005.

Lucien is one of the best known sports lawyers in the Swiss market with an emphasis on sports litigation and arbitration. He has represented domestic and international clients in numerous high-profile cases (including doping related proceedings) before various sports arbitration bodies, including the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). He is a highly experienced litigator in both international and domestic commercial cases in the Swiss courts (including the Swiss Federal Supreme Court). Lucien also advises clients on corporate, commercial, entertainment, employment, insurance and (international) enforcement matters.

Lucien obtained his law degree from the University of Zurich in 1990. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich in 1998 with a thesis on the jurisdiction of courts at the place of performance of an obligation under the Lugano and Brussels Conventions (graduation with the distinction summa cum laude and the Prof. Walther Hug-Prize, awarded for outstanding theses graded with the highest possible mark by a Swiss law school). His working languages are German, English, Italian and French.

Lucien is a member of the following professional associations: Zurich Bar Association, Swiss Bar Association, Vice-President of the International Sport Lawyers Association (ISLA), President of the Swiss Association of Football Players (SAFP) which is a member of F.I.F.Pro (Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels), FIFPro-Doping-Committee, President of the Swiss Association of Icehockey Players (SAIP), Employment Law Alliance, Associazone Internazionale Giuristi di Lingua Italiana (A.I.G.L.I.), Swiss-Italian Chamber of Commerce (Camera di Commercio Italiana per la Svizzera).

Arbitration
Corporate / Commercial
Employment
Insolvency / Restructuring
Insurance
Litigation
Sports

Zurich Office

Publications

These are the attorneys who helped Phonak secure a ProTour license when the UCI gave it grief, as reported at Pez:

In the court’s 31-page opinion, the judges affirmed all the objections brought by ARcycling regarding UCI’s refusal to grant the license. Furthermore, the CAS deemed the UCI licensing committee’s decision to be unreasonable and that Phonak had not sufficiently been granted their right to be heard. In addition, the judgement noted that equal treatment compared with other teams had not existed, and also that Phonak had not acted unethically. Likewise, the formal points raised during the license-granting proceedings were not sufficient to deny Phonak the license, according to the court’s opinion.


The UCI v. Phonak award for that case is interesting reading.

We'll observe that Andy Rihs (ARcycling/Phonak) seems to have been an outsider to the UCI/Procycling "old boys club", and never particularly welcome. One might wonder how much the UCI appreciated having Phonak back after contesting the license, and whether it might have been secretly pleased to have a payback opportunity.


2 comments:

riderguy said...

Interesting indeed.
It seems that UCI wanted to hold back the license because Phonak had the temerity to question the lab tests and procedures. But the arbitrators saw through that.
For the conspiracy theorists it adds the element that it wasn't Floyd who was targeted, but Phonak.

whareagle said...

And don't forget - Hamilton has said that Phonak performed their own testing, using as much identical equipment and techniques as possible, and often they DID come up with different numbers.

Has anyone kept up with the whereabouts of the Phonak Dr., Denise _____?