TPG2017 Chapter VI Annex example 25

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89. Prathamika is the parent company of an MNE group. Prathamika has been engaged in several large litigation matters and its internal legal department has become adept at managing large scale litigation on behalf of Prathamika. In the course of working on such litigation, Prathamika has developed proprietary document management software tools unique to its industry.
90. Company S is an associated enterprise of Prathamika. Company S becomes involved in a complex litigation similar to those with which the legal department of Prathamika has experience. Prathamika agrees to make two individuals from its legal team available to Company S to work on the Company S litigation. The individuals from Prathamika assume responsibility for managing documents related to the litigation. In undertaking this responsibility they make use of the document management software of Prathamika. They do not, however, provide Company S the right to use the document management software in other litigation matters or to make it available to Company S customers.
91. Under these circumstances, it would not be appropriate to treat Prathamika as having transferred rights in intangibles to Company S as part of the service arrangement. However, the fact that the Prathamika employees had experience and available software tools that allowed them to more effectively and efficiently perform their services should be considered in a comparability analysis related to the amount of any service fee to be charged for the services of the Prathamika employees.

 

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