Raue advises Kites on sale to Zoom

Berlin — Raue advi­sed the two foun­ders of Karls­ruhe-based start-up Karls­ruhe Infor­ma­tion Tech­no­logy Solu­ti­ons — Kites GmbH (“Kites”) on the sale of the language trans­la­tion tech­no­logy provi­der to NASDAQ-listed Zoom Video Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, Inc. (“Zoom”) advi­sed. The trans­la­tion tech­no­logy will be used in Zoom meetings in the future.

Kites specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment of real-time machine trans­la­tion solu­ti­ons. The start-up has exis­ted since 2015 and is a spin-off from the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT), where the two foun­ders are faculty members. Kites curr­ently employs twelve people, who will in future streng­then Zoom’s engi­nee­ring team from Karls­ruhe. The foun­ders will also remain with the team. Zoom intends to further expand the Karls­ruhe deve­lo­p­ment team and is also conside­ring estab­li­shing a rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment site in Germany.

Raue compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed the two foun­ders of Kites on the sale of the company to Zoom, in parti­cu­lar on corpo­rate, IP and employ­ment law issues as well as on the foreign trade clearance of the transaction.

Advi­sor to foun­der and share­hol­der Kites GmbH, Karls­ruhe: Raue, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Andreas Nelle, Photo (Lead, Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Markus Ples­ser (Part­ner, IP), Dr. Felix Stang (Part­ner, IP), Prof. Dr. Sascha Herms (Part­ner, Labor Law), Dr. Michael Berg­mann (Part­ner, Anti­trust Law, Foreign Trade Law), Dr. Michael Gläs­ner (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A), Tatiana Gush­china (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A), Benja­min Lück (Asso­ciate, IP), Anja Piet­sch­mann (Asso­ciate, Public Law), Dr. Johan­nes Modest (Asso­ciate, Anti­trust Law, Foreign Trade Law)