OVERVIEW
Kio specialises in competition litigation, data protection claims and commercial disputes. He was promoted to Senior Associate in January 2022.
Expertise
In addition to representing clients in large scale competition disputes with Big Tech corporations, Kio is currently part of the legal team advising:
- Duncan McCann in his representative action on behalf of affected children and parents against Google for various data breaches on the YouTube platform, the UK’s first representative data breach action of its kind.
- Justin Gutmann in his competition collective claim against various train operators for abuses of their dominant positions, the UK’s first standalone competition collective claim of its kind.
In addition to various commercial and pro bono matters, Kio was part of the legal team acting for over 100 claimants in the Air Cargo litigation against British Airways in the High Court and Court of Appeal.
Prior to joining Hausfeld, Kio trained at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP and undertook a 3-month competition secondment in Brussels.
Clients
Kio has experience representing clients on a range of antitrust, competition and data protection issues across a variety of sectors, including technology, utilities and transport.
EDUCATION
MA in International Peace and Security, King’s College, London
LLB (Hons) in Law, The University of Sussex
LLM in Professional Legal Practice, The University of Law
Experience
Antitrust/Competition
Kio played a key role as part of the legal teams dealing with ground breaking claims as follows:
- An opt-out collective action filed with the CAT on behalf of an estimated 19.5 million eligible UK users of smartphones and tablets running on Google’s Android operating system relating to excessive and unlawful charges on purchase in the Google Play App Store. The claim alleges that Google unfairly restricts consumers from accessing potential competition from other app distributors, by requiring smartphone manufacturers to pre-install a bundle of Google’s proprietary apps and services including the Google Play Store as well as imposing other contractual and technical restrictions
- A representative collective action with the CAT on behalf of some 19.6 million eligible UK iPhone and iPad users relating to excessive and unlawful charges by the Apple App Store. The claim alleges that Apple’s conduct violates section 18 of the UK Competition Act 1998 and Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
- Air Cargo, a landmark competition follow on damages claim in which Hausfeld pursued claims for losses that occurred in over 50 different jurisdictions as a result of the Air Cargo Cartel, ultimately representing 500 claimant entities - including a significant number of multinationals - against British Airways plc, and 13 Part 20 Defendant Airlines in some of the longest running, most high-profile and complex competition damages actions brought to date in the English Courts.
- Google Shopping - Kio is part of the team representing Foundem in its claim before the High Court against Google, for abuse of its dominant position in respect of its conduct in comparison shopping. In addition, Hausfeld obtained permission to intervene in Google’s ongoing appeal of the European Commission’s June 2017 Google Search (Shopping) Decision for four Hausfeld clients, Infederation Ltd (Foundem), German press publishers’ associations VDZ and BDZV as well as Visual Meta GmbH.
- Trains - The first standalone collective action to be filed in the UK. Hausfeld filed a claim on behalf of millions of rail passengers in the Competition Appeal Tribunal against the operators of the South Western and Southeastern rail franchises. The opt-out, collective action is being led by Justin Gutmann, formerly of Citizens Advice and an experienced campaigner on consumer issues.
Technology & Data Breach
Kio played a key role as part of the legal team which:
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Filed a CPR 19.6 representative action brought on behalf of Duncan McCann, on behalf of up to 5 million British children aged under 13 and their parents in the High Court – alleging that YouTube’s methods of targeting underage audiences and harvesting their data constitute major violations of the UK Data Protection Act and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), both of which were designed to protect citizens’ privacy rights.
