Andrea Appella

Andrea’s professional and academic expertise is competition/regulatory law and the intersection with intellectual property law with a particular focus on the media/tech industries, where he held senior in-house positions in international groups. After beginning his career as a solicitor at Herbert Smith (1994-1997), Andrea worked for MTV Europe (1998-1999), Warner Bros (1999-2002), Time Warner Europe (Associate General Counsel, 2003-2008), News Corporation/21^st Century Fox (Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, 2009-2019) and Netflix (Head of Global Competition, 2019-2022).

He is currently a Visiting Professor at Kings College Dickson Poon School of Law in London, where he teaches the course “Competition and Intellectual Property in the Media Industry: Law and Practice” in the LLM program, a member of the Innovation, Regulation and Competition Policy Centre (ICPC) at the Universita’ Europea in Rome, a Non-Governmental Advisor (NGA) to the International Competition Network (ICN) appointed by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, and a Director of Cinecitta’s training programme “Next Generation Lawyers”. He recently joined Herbert Smith Freehills as Consultant for Global TMT and Competition, Regulatory and Trade.[1]

Over the years, he has been involved in a wide range of market-leading competition and regulatory cases in the entertainment and tech industries, advising executives on some of the most transformational cases, M&As, investigations and policy developments across all media and tech sectors globally: movies, TV networks, pay-tv, music, production, sport, news, publishing, digital platforms, online streaming, games. He has also been at the forefront of the digital policy debates, from the Digital Single Market to the application of competition rules and copyright to the digital economy, the regulation of digital platforms, the intersection with IP, data protection and consumer laws, and more recently the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, the metaverse and NFTs.

In 2023 he was an advisor to the Italian Ministry of Culture on audiovisual and movie policies, copyright and the impact of new technologies (like the metaverse, artificial intelligence and NFTs) to the arts and creative industries. He published articles on the regulation of tech platforms,[2] the impact of artificial intelligence on creative industries[3] and the AI Act[4] and has contributed to the international policy debate on AI at industry conferences, like the Audio-Visual Producers Summit (promoted by APA, Associazioni Produttori Audiovisivi),[5] “Artificial Intelligence: Creativity, Ethics, Law and Market” (promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture)[6] and the British Screen Forum.[i]

Andrea was also Director of International at the UK Competition Authority, the Office of Fair Trading, in 2008 and 2009, where he was in charge of developing the OFT’s international strategy and led the team responsible for the OFT’s international activities (representing the UK and contributing to multilateral competition bodies such as OECD, ICN and ECN).

Andrea held leadership positions within the IBA Antitrust Committee, of which he was a co-chair in 2014-2015. He was featured in Global Competition Review’s list of top in-house antitrust lawyers in the world (Corporate Counsel 2019) and among the “Stars of the In-House Competition Bar” in Global Competition Review (March 2005)). He is sought after as a speaker and thought leader at major competition law and media law conferences.

Andrea earned his first law degree, magna cum laude, at the Libera Universita’ Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome, and an L.L.M., with Merit, from the London School of Economics. He is a member of the bar in both Italy (as an avvocato since 1996) and England (as a solicitor since 1997).

[1] https://www.herbertsmithfreehills.com/news/2023-10/herbert-smith-freehills-bolsters-competition-and-tmt-platforms-with-major-hire

[2] https://www.agendadigitale.eu/mercati-digitali/big-tech-in-attesa-delle-nuove-regole-cosi-usa-e-ue-si-preparano-alla-stretta/

[3]https://www.agendadigitale.eu/mercati-digitali/lintelligenza-artificiale-generativa-ha-aperto-il-vaso-di-pandora-del-copyright

[4] https://www.agendadigitale.eu/mercati-digitali/tutela-del-diritto-dautore-nell-ai-act-le-molte-questioni-irrisolte/

[5] https://www.apaonline.it/en/apv-summit-programma-en/panel-artificial-intelligence-has-opened-pandoras-box-for-the-creative-industries/

[6] https://cultura.gov.it/convegno-intelligenza-artificiale

[i] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7113559828932767744/