As the Trump administration is pushing forward on its deregulatory agenda and, in particular, its efforts to improve the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its implementation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (together, the Services), the Supreme Court is poised to hear a landmark case on designation of critical habitat under the ESA that could provide some guideposts for the Services’ new regulations ...
The fast-changing landscape of competition law in AfricaAt the turn of the century, only a handful of Africa’s 54 nation states had operational competition legislation and enforcement. However, in line with developments in the rest of the world, many African countries have since enacted competition legislation and established working competition authorities ...
If you sell your products on Amazon, you can benefit from enrolling your trademarks with the Amazon Brand Registry. The Amazon Registry is a free program accessible to monitor brands on Amazon’s website. This program includes proprietary search tools designed specifically to help online merchants identify trademark infringements on Amazon’s platform. If an infringing product is found, the registered owner can request that Amazon remove the product from its website ...
The Communications Decency Act (CDA)—the law Congress enacted in 1996 and confirmed this past year to shield online publishers from responsibility for the speech of others—gives internet platforms the right to publish the ideas and opinions of third-party users without being held liable for that content or being forced to remove it.[1] In the closely watched case ofHassell v ...
The Namibian Industrial Property Act, 2012 will finally come into effect on 1 August 2018 and will have far-reaching implications for the protection, use and enforcement of trade mark and other intellectual property rights in Namibia. This Act provides for the registration and protection and administration of patents, utility model certificates, industrial designs, trade marks, collective marks, certification marks and trade names ...
The release of Brand Finance South Africa 50 2018, a report on South Africa’s top brands (many of which are advised by ENSafrica’s IP team), gives all of us involved in brands and branding a chance to consider the commercial importance of our field.The report was produced by the company Brand Finance and mentions that over the past year, the value of South African brands grew by an impressive 8% to ZAR426-billion ...
Imagine listing this as one of a company’s major assets:“A sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.” That’s something Hasbro can do, certainly now that the US Patent and Trademark Office has accepted the company’s trade mark application for the smell of its Play-Doh product ...
“Use it or lose it”. It’s one of the fundamental principles of trade mark law – if a trade mark registration is not used, it’s liable to be lost. The principle makes perfect sense considering that a trade mark registration is effectively a monopoly (albeit one with limitations) to a name, logo or other form of branding. Monopolies should not and are not granted lightly ...
The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") recently came with important clarifications regarding the implementation of mergers before merger clearance, so called "gun jumping." The topic often arises in merger cases where the parties have "signed the deal" but are awaiting clearance by the relevant competition authority. What can be done by the parties before closing post signing, and what cannot be done prior to implementation? The judgment in case C-633/16 Ernst & Young P/S v ...
Walking the tight rope between making strides for women’s rights and being too strident So, the Trump-Kim Summit has successfully concluded in Singapore, with the Leader of the Free World shaking hands with the Supreme Leader of one of its most coldblooded dictatorships. Looking at these two scions of privilege, it is hard not to be struck by how much they have in common, united not just by their comically bad hair, but also by their low regard for women ...
As rapid technological changes in the 21st century continue to expand the types and volume of private electronic information, the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections are evolving. Originally, “Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass” and provided protections against searches of property. See, United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 405 (2012) ...
After not disturbing the Third-Party Doctrine for more than 40 years, the Supreme Court created a significant exception to it inCarpenter v. United States. Slip Op., 16-402 (Jun. 22, 2018). Under the Third-Party Doctrine, individuals who voluntarily provide personal information to third parties are deemed to relinquish their legitimate reasonable expectation of privacy in that information ...
In a unanimous vote on June 28, 2018, California lawmakers enacted a landmark, first-of-its-kind data privacy law that is intended to give consumers greater control over how their personal information is collected, stored, and sold by companies with whom they do business ...
Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court released its much-anticipated opinion inSouth Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., in which it held that physical presence within a State is no longer a prerequisite to the imposition of liability on out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales taxes. In doing so, the Court overruled two of its own earlier cases—National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of IllinoisandQuill Corp. v. North Dakota ...
Ferdose al-Taie, Dallas-based senior counsel in Dykema’s Commercial Litigation group, authored the article “Anonymous Whistleblowers Make Millions for Reporting Their Own Companies to Federal Regulators,” forFOCUS, the quarterly newsletter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) South Central Texas Chapter. In the article, al-Taie shines a light on the ins and outs of Dodd-Frank Whistleblower awards and who is eligible for consideration ...
InLagos v. United States, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that limits the ability of corporate victims of fraud to seek reimbursement of legal fees for internal investigations. The case began when GE Capital discovered that Sergio Lagos falsified numerous invoices for his company, which he used as collateral to obtain tens of millions of dollars in loans from GE Capital ...
On June 21, 2018, the United States Supreme Court, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., held that a state can now require companies not physically present in that state to collect tax on internet sales made to its residents. The explosive growth of e-commerce combined with the states’ eroding tax base convinced the Supreme Court to turn back a half century of jurisprudence ...
It has been long-established by the classic fundamental principles of corporate law that companies are separate and distinct persons from their shareholders, directors and officers. From this flows the general principle that it is the company, and the company alone, that can be liable for its obligations ...
In the Loop: With the Hanson Bridgett Government Group Many of us have had to request reimbursement from our company for an expense, which can be a pretty complicated process. For members of a legislative body, these rules can be even more specific. We'll think about Buddy, who sits on city council. Not long ago, the City gave Buddy a city-owned tablet to allow him to do his job remotely ...
How to strike the right balance between (i) the business need to take preparatory steps in view of integrating the target in M&A deals and (ii) the legal requirement to comply with the standstill obligation under merger control rules? ...
Should The Bahamas be at the forefront of cryptocurrency regulatory policy by implementing smart, flexible regulation that encourages the legitimate operators in the sub-sector to bloom or should we leave well enough alone?The Bahamas’ position in the landscape of the cryptocurrencies is a familiar one to many in the traditional financial services economy - they’ll know this story all too well with the growth, development, and decline of private banking: a new and exciting innovation
The Corps Struggles to Balance Competing Constitutional and Statutory Duties Federal agencies must often balance competing policy concerns and legal requirements. This process may be difficult and fraught with intense public feedback, and frequently results in litigation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) has found itself in the hot seat over how it manages the nation’s rivers, pitting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) against private property rights ...
COMOROS: Treaty with United Arab Emirates enters into forceThe income tax treaty between the Comoros Islands and the United Arab Emirates, recently entered into force. GHANA: VAT withholding agents appointed In an attempt to improve value-added tax (“VAT”) compliance, the Ghana Revenue Authority (“GRA”) announced the appointment of identified VAT withholding agents per industry on 17 May 2018 ...
The Serbian Parliament adopted amendments to the Serbian Company Law (Law), and they were published in the official journal on the same date. This is the first overhaul of the Serbian Company Law since it was enacted back in 2011. Most of the amendments relate to the introduction of the concepts required for Serbia's accession to the EU (such as cross-border merger and European company forms) ...
