Kadri Matteus: from intellectual property in innovation procurement to recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union

Kadri Matteus, Associate Partner and attorney-at-law at Ellex in Estonia, spoke at two conferences in early November: on 4 November at the innovation conference “From bold experimentation to breakthrough” and on 5 November at Addenda’s annual public procurement conference.

Innovation conference: who owns innovation created for the state?

The conference brought together public sector contracting authorities and developers of new solutions.

Kadri Matteus and Silja Elunurm, Team Lead at the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency, took part in a panel discussion titled “Who owns the innovation you created?” When the state becomes the first customer of a new solution, intellectual property is a central issue for both the contracting authority and the developer. Beyond intellectual property, the right to use and own data should also be considered. If the allocation of rights is not thought through, a good idea may fail in the procurement.

A key takeaway from the conference was that the main obstacles to wider use of innovation procurement are still public bodies’ low risk appetite and specialists’ lack of time and knowledge. To address these challenges, it is very welcome for the public and private sectors to come together.

Addenda annual public procurement conference

The conference reviewed the year’s main procurement developments, legislative changes, and the practice of the courts and the Public Procurement Review Committee. Kadri Matteus gave an overview of the most important judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2026.

Five key takeaways:

• A subsidiary is a separate person in a procurement. A corporate group is not a single economic entity under public procurement law, so relying on a subsidiary’s capacities means relying on the capacities of another entity (C-812/24 LIPOR).
• In the evaluation, it may be taken into account whether the tenderer undertakes to pay its employees wages higher than those set in the collective agreement (C-210/24 AESTE).
• A contract ends when the works are accepted and the final invoice is issued. After that, new works cannot be ordered from the same contractor by modifying the contract. This applies even if the contracting authority has not yet paid the invoice (C-820/24 Strominator).
• Financial corrections must not be automatic. Instead of applying a percentage set out in a table, each case must be assessed individually (C-186/25).
• EU funding does not automatically outweigh a tenderer’s right to effective legal protection in the form of suspending the conclusion of the contract while the dispute is pending. The court must weigh the interests on the merits and must first hear the party bringing the challenge (C-266/25 and C-267/25 I-SETE).

At the end of the day, Kadri joined colleagues from Sorainen in a panel discussion titled “Public procurement 2035: where is procurement law heading in the next decade?” The main topics were the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its impact on public procurement over the next nine years, the reform of EU public procurement law, and the amendments to Estonian law that entered into force on 1 November.

“Procurement law is currently in a whirlwind of change, shaped both by the rapid spread of AI and by global developments and developments in the European Union. In both innovation procurement and the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it pays to keep up with the latest developments and to think through key issues as early as the procurement preparation stage. This helps prevent disputes and creates a clearer basis for successful cooperation between the contracting authority and the tenderer,” said Kadri Matteus.

Kadri Matteus joined Ellex on 2 November. She is developing the firm’s public procurement practice and also advises clients on public law and administrative disputes.