Horst Becker

Horst Becker is the founder and partner of Ariathes Rechtsanwälte, a law firm specialising in German and international commercial law. His offices are in Munich, Paris and Berlin.

Mr. Becker studied German law and political science at the Universities of Tübingen, Geneva and Bonn and French commercial and economic law at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). During his training as a trainee lawyer, he worked in the franchise consultancy department of Ernst & Young in London. He is a graduate of the International Faculty of Comparative Law in Strasbourg and was a national correspondent of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London. He currently teaches at the Centre d'Études Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle (CEIPI) at the University of Strasbourg (Robert Schumann) and at the Hochschule Mainz. He teaches international business law, focusing on the internationalisation of distribution and franchising systems, German distribution law and German franchising law.

Mr. Becker was admitted to the bar in 1991 and focuses on representing his clients in the areas of franchising and distribution law, intellectual property law, competition and copyright law, corporate law and arbitration. He is a renowned lawyer in the field of business and franchise law, and has drafted a large number of franchise agreements and related contracts for German and foreign franchises. His extensive lecturing and publishing activities mainly cover the topics of business law, franchising and international or binational legal issues. As a lawyer, Mr Becker advises both franchisors and franchisees. Among the franchisors he advises are renowned French, Swiss and North American franchisors, whom he has legally assisted in entering the German market. His work makes him one of the "World's Leading Franchise Experts". He has given numerous lectures on these specialist areas, for example with a focus on trademark law at Beck-Seminare and at the German Franchise Association. He is still actively doing so. He advises clients in German, French and English, but also has a working knowledge of Spanish and Italian.

Mr Becker is co-author of the "Praxishandbuch Franchising" (Verlag C.H. Becker, 2003), the ICC Model International Franchising Contract (Paris 2011) and the ICC Guide "Using Franchising to Take Your Business International" (Paris 2014). He is, inter alia, a member of the German Franchise Association, the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property and Copyright, the German Institution of Arbitration and the Commission on Commercial Law and Practice as well as the Task Force Franchising of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). He also holds membership in the international bar association Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) and the International Bar Association (IBA).

For several years, Mr Becker has been listed in Who's Who of Business Lawyers as one of the leading experts in the field of the law of franchising in Germany. In addition, he has been listed for many years by the Handelsblatt and the global rating agency Best Lawyers as one of the leading lawyers in the field of franchising and, for some years now, also in the field of intellectual property law. The Handelsblatt named him Lawyer of the Year in 2023 and Best Lawyers named him Lawyer of the Year for 2024.