Andrea Appella joins OpenAI as Associate General Counsel

Andrea Appella joins OpenAI as Associate General Counsel

He was previously serving at Herbert Smith Freehills

Andrea Appella has assumed the role of Associate General Counsel of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at OpenAI, which develops artificial intelligence technologies, including ChatGPT. He returned in-house after nearly three decades of experience in the in-house legal market.

He focuses on regulatory law, competition, and intellectual property on an international scale within major players in the creative - audiovisual, media, and tech industries.

Appella has dealt with numerous competition and regulatory cases and legislative developments, shaping the audio-visual and creative industry over the past decades. His expertise extends to mergers and acquisitions, competition law proceedings, market and regulatory investigations, copyright and digital single market policies, and regulation of audio-visual media and digital platforms.

In October 2023, he joined Herbert Smith Freehills as a consultant in the TMT sector and competition and regulatory fields. Before that, Appella was head of global competition at Netflix (2019-2022), senior vice president and deputy general counsel, international at News Corporation-21st Century Fox (2009-2019), vice president and associate general counsel at Warner Bros-Time Warner (1999-2008), and director at MTV Europe (1998-1999).

Well-recognized as one of the most qualified lawyers internationally in the TMT sector, he has covered the audio-visual industry chain, from production to distribution, digital economy, and artificial intelligence.

He is a visiting professor at King’s College London, teaching ‘Competition and Intellectual Property in the Media Industry: Law and Practice’ in the LLM program. He is also a member of the Innovation, Competition and Regulation Policy Centre at the European University of Rome and the Scientific Committee of Cinecittà’s Next Generation Lawyers course.