The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) announced that, as part of President Obama’s recently proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, the PTO’s budget would be $2.322 billion, a 23 percent increase over FY 2010. This significant budget increase is part of PTO Director Kappos’ long term plan for increasing PTO examination efficiency and decreasing the backlog of applications ...
During negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, it was suggested that sometimes "we all have to jump together". Having read through the Local Government and Communities Committee Report published on 28th January 2010 following an inquiry into Local Government Finances, this quote has particular resonance. While there is perhaps nothing new in the report, it is certainly timely as local government works its way through the budget setting exercise for 2010/11 ...
Seeking a state purchasing contract? You may now be required to register as a lobbyist. Some independent contractors who help vendors secure procurement contracts in Texas are now required to register with the Texas Ethics Commission.1 House Bill 3445, which the Texas Legislature passed last spring during the 81st Texas Legislative Session, established new guidelines for lobbying activities related to state procurement contracts ...
In our final procurement update of 2009 we report on two important administrative changes: new advertising thresholds, and new OJEU notices. New advertising thresholds published These will apply for two years from 1 January 2010. As predicted, because Sterling has been so weak against the Euro, the Sterling thresholds have actually gone up significantly (meaning slightly fewer contracts will be caught by the full Regulations) ...
In its Sea Judgement of 10 September 2009 (C-573/07), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) further clarifies its “in-house” jurisprudence. More specifically, it goes more deeply into the notion of control ...
In Belgium, contracting agreements are subject to the Belgian Civil Code (‘BCC’) plus several other regulations. In this article, we briefly discuss five rules which foreign investors or principals may be surprised apply to Belgian contracting agreements. Make sure you avoid these pitfalls!1 ...
The Acoset judgment of the ECJ dated 15 October 2009 (C-196/08) was related to a dispute about an institutionalised public-private partnership (IPPP). A local authority wanted to grant a concession to a newly-created semi-public company, whose minority shareholder would be a private company selected by an open tender procedure. The minority shareholder would be responsible for the operations of the semi-public company ...
In the Horizon Pleiades case, the Council of State was confronted with an interesting question: if a public authority organises a procedure to select its partner for a PPP company, which will perform works or services which would normally be covered by the Procurement Directives, does the selection procedure have to comply with the rules laid down in the Procurement Directives or can a “light” selection procedure be used? In its ruling, dated 19 June 2009, the Council of Stat
How can the government’s attitude and approach to internet issues best be described? The Canadian government recognises that Canada is a small country in a global economy and it pursues a general policy to ensure that Canada is ‘connected’ ...
The quality of public services in Indonesia is expected to improve after the issuance of Law No. 25 of 2009 dated 18 July 2009 regarding Public Services (“PS Law”) ...
Media organisations and journalists will now need to be more cautious when entering into contracts with third parties for interviews and information, following the decision of the High Court in ACCC v Seven Network. The court held that section 65A of the Trade Practices Act (TPA) will not afford protection to a media organisation against section 52 of the TPA when it engages in chequebook journalism ...
In two recent cases (Coditel and Stadtreinigung Hamburg), the ECJ dealt with the so-called “in-house exemption” in procurement matters ...
What are the limits on national public procurement law to prevent collusion between tenderers in award procedures? This was the question the ECJ dealt with in its recent Assitur judgment (C-538/07).The facts of the Assitur case were as follows. Three tenderers passed the qualitative selection phase and were admitted to the final procedure ...
The intention of this brief note is to present an analysis of internal crises within law firms and the way of avoiding them. We define a crisis as an unexpected and grave difficulty or danger (“a time of intense difficulty or danger”). As a matter of fact the greek origin of crisis (“krisis”) meant “decision” (from “krinein” – decide) ...
The long-awaited and controversial Equality Bill (the Bill) has been published and laid before Parliament. Public consultations are scheduled on several of the measures outlined in this very significant piece of legislation, though it is not expected to come into force until the end of next year. With a General Election likely in June 2010, it remains to be seen how quickly the Bill will progress and how much of it will survive ...
The establishment and operation of many Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) involves cooperation amongst industry participants, including those who may be competitors in other aspects of their businesses. It is very important that participants in CRCs remember that the prohibitions against anti-competitive conduct in the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (TPA) will apply to the CRC collaboration ...
Indonesia has been described as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In 2008, the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index stated that Indonesia ranked 130th least transparent out of 180 countries. However, the continued existence of the Corruption Court in Indonesia which has tried many corruption cases and is trying to improve Indonesia’s anti corruption activities, is now under threat ...
Commission adopts temporary State aid 'credit crunch' framework The European Commission has adopted a temporary state aid framework, designed to help tackle the spiralling negative effects of the 'credit crunch' on the real economy. Under the framework, Member States can - after notifying the Commission - put into effect a range of aid schemes aimed at helping otherwise sound companies that are finding it difficult to access funding ...
Family Intervention Tenancies (FITs) are a new type of tenancy to be introduced by Sections 297-298 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. They will be another tool for registered providers (the new term for both Registered Social Landlords and local authorities to tackle anti-social behaviour ...
Today when financial experts are busy in measuring the depth of present financial turmoil, layman is cursing Governments and experts are blaming sub-prime mortgage payment defaulters but no-body in the economic fraternity could appreciate that it was a policy failure. Moreover, no one in the financial world could imagine the enormous size of the trouble that lending on sub-prime would bring the world’s biggest financial catastrophe of the century ...
Following consultation with national competition authorities and the public, the European Commission has published enforcement priorities guidelines, which it will follow when applying Article 82 to exclusionary conduct by dominant companies. Throughout the guidelines, the Commission reiterates that Article 82 should protect competition and consumers – rather than individual competitors (an approach previously advocated by Commissioner Kroes) ...
On 16 September 2008, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) gave a preliminary ruling in joined cases C-468/06 - C-478/06 specifying that a refusal by a pharmaceutical undertaking that holds a dominant position on a relevant pharmaceutical market to supply wholesalers with a view to impeding parallel export of such wholesalers from one Member State to other Member States constitutes an abuse of a dominant market position under Article 82 of the EC Treaty ...
As national governments have taken increasingly drastic steps to shore up their banking systems so the Commission has been working overtime dealing with the State aid fallout. Many of the measures taken by Member States could distort competition - a serious worry in the current volatile climate. Against this backdrop, the Commission has been keen to stress that it wants to work with Member States to ensure financial stability ...
A new Swedish Competition Act will enter into force on 1 November 2008. The Act was passed by parliament on 11 June 2008. The new legislation means further harmonisation with EC competition rules and it also introduces a number of new features in order to enhance cartel enforcement. One of the new features is the introduction of trading prohibitions. The rules regarding fines will become both clearer and stricter in an aim to enhance legal certainty ...
