By a vote of seven justices, with three inhibiting, one absent, and four dissenting, the Supreme Court – in a decision penned by J. Perez and promulgated last June 25, 2013 – dismissed this petition for certiorari assailing the earlier Resolutions of public respondent COMELEC which ordered the cancellation of petitioner’s Certificate of Candidacy (CoC) for the position of Representative of the lone district of Marinduque ...
PrefaceThis guide is written as an introduction to Ukrainian legal system from the viewpoint of foreign investors, in particular Chinese ones, and will help you in deciding whether to do a deal in Ukraine and what strategy should be chosen when investing in this country. The digest of key legal issues may be found helpful both at the stage of initial investment research and in the course of a particular investment project ...
IntroductionGovernment contractors often use teaming agreements to combine the services of two or more contractors to offer the most persuasive bid for a government contract. The prime contractor typically agrees with the other team members that if the prime wins the bid, it will allocate some of the contractual work to the other member(s) ...
At the end of May, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida sentenced a Florida import company president to 22 months in federal prison for violating consumer product safety and other laws. His wife, an executive of a related company, was sentenced to a year of probation. The case is significant because it involves a criminal prosecution of importers of unsafe children’s products ...
I OVERVIEWChile continues to offer an attractive business environment. Chile was the first Latin American economy to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and is party to dozens of free trade agreements (including with the United States, the European Union, Mexico, South Korea and Brazil) ...
The various plans and the range of measures included in them that have been described have produced practical results, particularly an increase in the applications for registration of patents, trademarks and protection by copyright, specifically for property such as software. In terms of applications for patents registered in 2011, China came in first place above the USA and Japan ...
The Court of Justice of the European Union recently issued a judgment in Case C-1/12, following a reference for a preliminary ruling submitted by the Lisbon Court of Appeals, in the dispute between the Order of Chartered Accountants (OTOC) and the Portuguese Competition Authority ...
Purchases of shares or assets of the target companyPurchases of shares are relatively free of restrictions unless the target company is a public corporation (namely, a company that has its shares registered with the Chilean securities and insurance regulator, the SVS), one of the parties to the transaction participates in a regulated industry or the entity resulting from a business combination raises competition issues ...
There was a bit of a stir in the British press recently, with certain companies complaining that the major UK supermarket chains are now using get-ups for their own-label products that are so similar to the get-ups used by the major brand owners that consumer confusion is inevitable. An industry spokesman said this: ‘Our research shows that consumers are more likely to buy own-label products if they look like brands ...
The Libyan Trade Mark Office (“LTMO”) has resumed the process of trade mark searching since April 2013 and will reportedly be accepting new applications for the registration of trade marks in May 2013. This after the LTMO had ceased its operations in January 2011 due to civil unrest in the country. There has, however, been some uncertainty with regard to the LTMO’s acceptance of new trade mark applications ...
The Comoro Islands, situated off the south-east coast of Africa, has ratified the Bangui Agreement, thereby becoming one of the 17 member countries of The African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI). The Bangui Agreement, once consented to, requires that the member states accede to the international treaties and conventions listed in the Agreement ...
Battered women who fear for their safety, mothers unable to support their children, dysfunctional families in need. A reality for many women is the presence of domestic violence in their lives. This situation, although occurring in all social and economic levels, is much more obvious and has more serious consequences in low-income communities ...
Increase in the Registration of Patents, Trademarks and Property Protected by Copyright - The various plans and the range of measures included in them that have been described have produced practical results, particularly an increase in the applications for registration of patents, trademarks and protection by copyright, specifically for property such as software. In terms of applications for patents registered in 2011, China came in first place above the USA and Japan ...
The Office of the Civil Registrar General of the National Statistics Office promulgated Administrative Order No. 1 series of 2012 (AO 1) on October 24, 2012. The AO implements the provisions of Republic Act 10172, the amendatory law to Republic Act 9048, and supplements Administrative Order 1 series of 2001, which, in turn, implements RA 9048. Both statutes provide a means of correcting erroneous entries in the civil registry without need of judicial action ...
The production and circulation of counterfeit products have been an economic and social problem for some time. Not only can such products pose a safety risk to consumers who use them, counterfeit products also lead to considerable lost income for legitimate businesses, decrease consumer confidence in the marketplace and are often used to finance organized crime. The retail value of counterfeit goods seized by the RCMP increased from $7.6 million in 2005 to $38 million in 2012 ...
Traditional knowledge (TK), for example folklore, is a controversial issue and we’ve written about it before. The government feels that TK should be legally protected, and that this should be achieved through amendments to the intellectual property (IP) statutes. The IP community has no issue with TK being protected, but it’s not very comfortable with this being done through IP legislation ...
Mobilizing the Money: A New Investment Program President Dilma Rousseff has launched an ambitious investment program in infrastructure, transport, logistics, and energy that will cost US$ 235 billion. The president and the entire government have been mobilized in the search for these investments, from domestic, foreign, public, and private sources ...
The New Amparo Law-On April 2, 2013, the Amparo Law, Regulatory of Articles 103 and 107 of the Constitution of the United Mexican Estates, was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. This new law broadens the constitutional defense of rights, since more individuals can have access to the amparo actions ...
The Obama Administration has announced its intention of entering into negotiations with the European Union (“EU”) for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“TTIP”) aimed at achieving a substantial increase in transatlantic trade and investment between the world’s two largest economies. In the Federal Register of April 1, the United States Trade Representative solicited comments from the public with respect to U.S. negotiating objectives ...
On 28 January 2013 the «Diário da República» (official gazette) published a set of measures1 - that came into force the following day - to improve and streamline the special scheme2 for granting a Portuguese ‘investment residence permit’ (“IRP”) to foreign nationals to enable them to make certain investments in the country ...
On March 22, 2013, the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") announced that it will submit to the Office of Management and Budget ("OMB") a new Information Collection Request ("ICR") related to the implementation of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards ("CFATS") Personnel Surety Program ("PSP"). DHS is soliciting comments during a 60-day public comment period (which ends May 21, 2013) prior to the submission of the ICR to OMB ...
In 2008 the government introduced important intellectual property (IP) legislation. The Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act 51 of 2008 - which only came into force on 2 August 2010 – governs the ownership and exploitation of IP which flows from publicly financed research and development (R&D) ...
