An American organization that finds itself involved in litigation in Canada, or an American attorney advising such an organization, will find most aspects of the Canadian civil justice system to be familiar. The legal systems of the two countries are comparable in many respects, they share common historical antecedents, and their core values are the same ...
ICANN is expected to announce the first set of successful applications and list of new generic top level domains later this summer. Before the new generic top level domains can be delegated, the applications need to go through an initial evaluation phase and any objections against those applications need to be addressed. Infact, the first decisions on legal rights objections to applications for new generic top level domains were only recently published by WIPO ...
Two years after the issuance of Law No. 6 of 2011 on Immigration (“Immigration Law”), its implementing regulation i.e. Government Regulation No. 31 of 2013 on The Implementation of Law No. 6 of 2011 on Immigration (“Reg. 31/2013”), was issued in order to provide further details on certain Articles of the Immigration Law. Reg. 31/2013 came into effect on 16 April 2013. Visas There are four types of visas under Reg ...
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 ...
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) ...
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 ...
You’ve seen all the articles about the Supreme Court’s decision in Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc. and the end of DNA patents, but what does this mean outside the biotech world? It means more insight into patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. While Myriad does not affect business method and software patents, it is indicative of the general trend of the Supreme Court with respect to the threshold required to obtain a valid patent ...
It’s been well reported that the singer Rihanna has sued the UK retail chain Topshop for US$5 million in damages for the unauthorised use of her image on a t-shirt. Rihanna is apparently suing for passing-off, the argument being that people seeing the t-shirt are likely to assume that she has endorsed the brand. This may have got you wondering what the law is in South Africa on the issue of unauthorised endorsement ...
Domain names and trade marks are inextricably linked. The reason for this is simple – when a company needs to decide on a name at which it wants people to find it on the Internet, it generally opts for one of its own trade marks. As a result, the issues that crop up in trade mark disputes often crop up in domain name disputes too ...
The KZN High Court handed down a really interesting judgment in May 2013 in the case of Distell v KZN Wines & Spirits. The decision’s interesting because it not only looks at the issues that need to be considered in a trade mark infringement claim, but it also highlights the differences between trade mark infringement and passing off ...
Although we observed a increasingly widespread use of computer-based solutions in the cloud ( cloud computing ) in the information systems of companies and administrations, sometimes the obvious advantages it brings to the customer do not pay the necessary attention to the assessment of corporate risks that can generate its adoption ...
As Panama became part of a number of industrial property related treaties, our internal laws have become more territorial; the use of a trademark is territorial again and registration becomes imperative for protection. Use as a Basis for Protection In Panama, as happens in most of the countries around the world, the right to register a trademark is acquired by its first use in commerce ...
The Supreme Court’s recent decision has seeded another patent protection feather in Monsanto’s increasingly large cap, in addition to providing guidance on application of the patent exhaustion doctrine in the case of self-replicating technology. In Bowman v ...
The Federal Circuit released the results of its en banc hearing of a case involving the issue of what is patent eligible subject matter under section 101 of the Patent Act. (CLS Bank International v. Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd., F. 3d., Case No. 2011 1301 (May 9, 2013) ...
A survey by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that 47% of all UK adults now use their personal smart phone, laptop or tablet computer for work purposes - known as 'bring your own device' (BYOD).However, fewer than three in 10 users had received guidance on how to use their devices for work. This raises concerns that users may not understand how to protect the personal information accessed and stored on these devices ...
The first industrial revolution, which began in the 1750s, lasted for between 80 to 100 years. The pace of technological change today encourages us to believe that the second industrial revolution (IR2) will be completed at much greater speed. So if we take the mid-1980s as a starting point, with the emergence of optical disk technologies into consumer markets, you would expect us to be well on the way to completion, 30 years into IR2 ...
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 ...
The hacker group Anonymous announced that it, in concert with Middle East- and North Africa-based criminal hackers and cyber actors, will conduct a coordinated online attack labeled “OpUSA” against banking and government websites today, May 7. Anonymous stated that OpUSA will be a distributed denial of service (DDoS) in which websites may be defaced and legitimate users may be unable to access websites ...
On 2 April 2013, data protection authorities across the EU - including the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - announced that they are now investigating whether Google's privacy policy complies with national data protection laws.The investigation was prompted by allegations that Google failed to implement recommendations issued to it by the EU Working Party in October 2012 ...
I. Recruitment and Social Media 1. Is there a specific legal framework for the use of social media in the recruitment context? There are no specific laws or regulations dealing with the use of information from social media in the recruitment context. However, the following general laws are relevant: - Article 8, European Convention on Human Rights, 1950; - Articles 23, 24 and 29, Constitution of the Russian Federation; - Federal Law No ...
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 ...
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 ...
