On 1 April 2020, the Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) granted an appeal against an order of Acting Justice Kose in the Cape Town High Court in favour of The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) (Bergh and Others v The Agricultural Research Council (Case no 93/2019) [2020] ZASCA 30). The appeal was against an order interdicting the appellants from infringing the ARC’s copyright in the BeefPro computer program and from unlawfully competing with the ARC ...
Directions pertaining to the communications sector were issued on 26 March 2020 by the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies (the "Minister"), to ensure the smooth operations of the electronic communications sector – as essential services – during the national state of disaster period. You can read our previous article relating to the Directionshere ...
A recent report published by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (“CEA”) on drug pricing in the United States of America has put the cost of medicine and the access thereto by the poor, firmly back in the spotlight, and on a global scale. In the CEA report, President Donald Trump’s administration argues that the USA pays higher prices for pharmaceuticals because other developed countries have systems in place to actively force down drug pricing ...
A fierce fight for the leadership of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (”WIPO”) reflects an ever-growing recognition of the importance of IP. The US has seemingly secured a major victory in its quest to prevent a Chinese official from becoming the director general of WIPO. It has achieved this by backing a candidate from Singapore, Daren Tang, the head of the Singapore Intellectual Property Office ...
Disputes arising from an employer’s failure to promote an employee have become an established feature in South African workplaces, especially in the public sector. They have also been the subject of a large number of arbitrations by virtue of the provisions of section 186 (2)(a) of the Labour Relations Act, 1995 (“LRA”). This section provides that the definition of an unfair labour practice includes unfair conduct by an employer relating to the promotion of an employee ...
South Africa is in lockdown in the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, and although we aren’t able to meet face-to-face over this period, we know how important it is to stay in touch, and we will continue to keep you up-to-date on recent tax developments. In this regard, it feels like a lifetime ago that the South African Minister of Finance delivered his 2020 Budget Speech on 26 February 2020 ...
South Africa is a party to a number of international environmental agreements, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Control (“UNFCCC”), 1992, the Kyoto Protocol, 1997 and the Paris Agreement. In terms of the Paris Agreement, governments have made a commitment to ensure that global average temperatures remain below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. For South Africa, a country that relies heavily on fossil fuels to generate energy, this is a mammoth task ...
A recent posting by United Kingdom IP firm Beck Greener discusses a very interesting European Union case involving sound marks. If you have any interest in trade marks, you will know that trade marks can take many forms. Although most trade marks are words or logos, trade marks can be all sorts of things… straplines (slogans), product shapes, store layouts colours, sounds, smells or tastes. But many of these more exotic types of trade marks can be difficult to protect ...
Over the past few years, more and more companies have started publishing news content written by artificial intelligence (“AI”) algorithms. This includes Chinese technology giant, Tencent, whose rapid growth has shaped the trajectory of Naspers, the South African company that currently still owns a bit more than 30% of Tencent. Tencent publishes content produced by automated software known as Dreamwriter ...
Why aren’t young influencers taking IP seriously? If you’re over 19 (and you are because you’re reading an article about intellectual property) there’s a good chance that to you “TikTok” is the sound that a clock makes, even though in this case it’s been written by someone who can’t spell. But for younger people, the term has a different meaning altogether ...
Integrated projects are pointing to the future of land use in increasingly crowded Singapore, but will they become white elephants as technology brings us (virtually) closer together than before? As an Alpha+ world city, Singapore sits alongside commercial powerhouses like Beijing, Paris and Sydney as one of the world’s most globalised cities ...
On April 3, 2020, small business owners started applying for forgivable loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to help keep their workforce employed during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the program got underway, the Small Business Administration (SBA) rolled out important new guidance for small businesses, including an updated loan application form and comprehensive guidance on PPP requirements for borrowers and lenders ...
The provisions of the newly-enacted CARES ACT that have been receiving the most attention from owners of small businesses that have been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic are those relating to the business-sustaining forgivable loans and tax benefits that will potentially be available to those companies ...
The COVID-19 outbreak has impacted the manufacturing, transportation and supple chains underpinning countless aspects of trade and commerce on a global basis. Additionally, the shelter-in-place orders have caused nonessential businesses to shut down, resulting in many of them being unable to meet their contractual obligation. Force Majeure Whether coronavirus can be considered a force majeure depends on the wording of the provision ...
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”) offers relief to businesses affected by COVID-19 through various programs, including forgivable loans and federal income tax credits. However, the CARES Act prevents businesses from claiming certain benefits that are considered duplicative ...
By Law 129 of 17 March 2020 (hereinafter, the “Law”) the Republic of Panama established the regulatory framework for a restricted database ...
This legal analysis focuses on the typical case of a company that although it is not directly targeted by the measures established in order to prevent the spreading of the novel coronavirus, it still registers a decrease of demand, of the level of proceeds and of the production of goods and services ...
The new measures adopted by the European Commission Last Friday, the European Commission (“Commission”) has adopted an amendment to existing State aid rules to widen the perimeter of the national measures which can be authorized based on the exceptional legal framework to cope with the current crisis. a. In particular, the Commission considered the following measures:a. More support for research and development related to the current health crisis ...
In order to cope with the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of North Macedonia has instituted a number of administrative measures aimed at preventing the spread of this virus, but also at dealing with the economic consequences of the crisis ...
This supplements our inBrief dated 3 April 2020, which reported on measures implemented by the UAE authorities in response to COVID-19 up to 9:00 a.m. that day. Many new measures have been introduced since then. We now report on new measures taken up to 9:00 a.m. on Monday 6 April 2020 ...
Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the deferrals of loan payments and other payments (such as leasing payments, etc.) have been provided by credit institutions or other financial institutions voluntarily, upon their negotiations with debtors, upon their discretion and within the formal process for approval of deferred payments with a potential future negative effect on the credit score of the debtor ...
