A trade mark dispute about the name Iceland highlights the issue of trade marks in relation to geographic names. A dispute has arisen in Europe between Iceland the country and Iceland the brand – Iceland is a large UK-based supermarket chain. The supermarket chain has an EU trade mark registration for the name Iceland, a registration that it struggled long and hard to get, overcoming multiple oppositions along the way ...
It has always been the practice of the Industrial Property Institute (“IPI”) of Mozambique to prohibit the refiling of trade marks that have been finally refused, which has posed a serious obstacle to trade mark applicants who wish to refile their applications in Mozambique for strategic reasons. Refiling provides the applicant with an opportunity to consider the options available to overcome obstacles posed by earlier trade marks, or refusals based on distinctiveness ...
Karanovic & Nikolic is pleased to announce its involvement in advising R&R Ice Cream, a leading ice cream company based in the UK, on Serbian law matters relating to its 50/50 joint venture with Nestlé, the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company. The advising team consisted ofSrdjan DabeticandStefan Antonicfrom Karanovic & Nikolic’s Belgrade office ...
Karanovic & Nikolic, in cooperation with law firm Goodwin Procter, is pleased to have provided all around legal support and advice to GoDaddy on its acquisition of Devana Techologies’ ManageWP business. ManageWP is a Serbian based start-up service for managing multiple WordPress websites, developed by Devana Technologies; GoDaddy is the world’s largest internet domain registrar ...
According to last week's news reports, the President of the Provincial Government of Vojvodina, Igor Mirovic, met the Ambassador of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Lazar Mirkic, in Belgrade on Thursday, 15 September, for the purpose of discussing Bosnian interest for Vojvodina's food products and the potential cooperation in the area of tourism ...
Arbitral institutions strive to provide the parties they serve with a fair and impartial dispute resolution process that results in an unassailable final award. Since “evident partiality” in the arbitrators is one of the limited means to attack an award, the selection of unbiased arbitrators is fundamental to that goal, and most arbitral institutions have some requirement or guidance on arbitrator disclosures ...
The Law Decree No. 211 was amended on August 30th, 2016 by Law 20,945 (the “New Law“). The following are the main amendments: Amendments on collusionThe New Law amends the crime of collusion introducing the per se standard to punish hard core cartels, providing evidence of the existence of an agreement being sufficient, independently of the power of the parties in the market and the anti-competitive effects ...
ENSafrica’s 2016 Anti-Bribery and Corruption Survey Results Overview ENSafrica’s third annual anti-bribery and corruption (“ABC”) survey has revealed that 39% of respondents have experienced incidents of bribery or corruption in the last 24 months. The key question addressed in the survey was whether or not companies are putting proportionate measures in place to deal with the rising risks of bribery and corruption ...
Media reports from Croatia are telling us that the Podravka food company has sold its Studenac mineral water bottling facilities to the Slovenian Radenska company, which is in turn owned by the Czech company Kofola – one of the European leaders in the field of producing and distributing non-alcoholic drinks. The acquisition contract has been reported as signed, with the full takeover expected to happen by the end of this year ...
On August 28, 2016, the Israeli District Court of the Central District issued a decision regarding the right of publicity under Israeli Law (In re Fundacio Gala Salvador Dali v. V.S Marketing (Israel 2005) Ltd.). The right of publicity is the right of a person to financially exploit his name, picture or voice ...
The credit industry in South Africa is significant and lucrative. According to the National Credit Regulator’s Consumer Credit Market Report for the first quarter of 2016, South Africa’s total outstanding gross debtors’ book for consumers for the quarter ended March 2016 was a staggering R1.66-trillion, in respect of which unsecured credit accounted for R165.16-billion ...
On August 10, 2016, the Québec Court of Appeal authorized a class action pertaining to international roaming fees, thus reiterating, with renewed respect for the opposing view, that meeting the authorization threshold and the criteria respecting the representative's interest is fairly easy under Quebec law ...
Acceleration clauses are commonly found in loan agreements that require debtors to make repayment in instalments. A standard acceleration clause provides that if a debtor fails to pay an instalment, the creditor may elect to terminate the loan agreement and demand payment of the full amount owing under the agreement ...
There’s certainly been a great deal of litigation around the trade mark ClearVu in South Africa – passing-off proceedings before the High Court, an appeal from that judgment to the Supreme Court of Appeal, and proceedings before the Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”). Now there’s another judgment, one that deals with an opposition to a trade mark application for ClearVu ...
The Philippine chapter of The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Patents 2017 was contributed by SyCipLaw partners Enrique T. Manuel and Vida M. Panganiban-Alindogan. Mr. Manuel heads the firm’s Intellectual Property department. The chapter includes information on patent enforcement, patent amendment, licensing, patent term extension, patent prosecution and opposition, border control measures, Antitrust Law and inequitable conduct, and current developments ...
As we explained previously, in April 2016 the Second Appellate District held that California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) creates a separate duty to provide reasonable accommodation to an applicant or employee who is “associated” with a disabled person. On rehearing of the Castro-Ramirez v. Dependable Highway Express, Inc. decision (Case No. B261165, B262524), the Court has retreated from its prior holding ...
Maria Ostashenko, ALRUD Partner, and Ksenia Erokhina, Senior Attorney, contributed to Comparative legal Guide to Outsourcing 2016. Within collaboration with the publishing house ALRUD specialists have prepared the chapter devoted to outsourcing and its regulation in Russia. The chapter has comprehensiblequestion-answer format ...
The August 2016 issue of the Asian Legal Business (ALB) Asia Edition includes a regional update by SyCipLaw partner Maria Teresa Mercado-Ferrer entitled “A Need to Clarify Powers of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority and Local Government Units Relative to Peza-Registered BPO Companies”. The regional update can be found on page 15.Read the full ALB August 2016 issue for free ...
Streets named after a country’s heroes and heroines can be a hotly contested and emotive issue, especially in a country such as South Africa, with its colonial and apartheid past. This was illustrated in the recent Constitutional Court case of City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality v AfriForum and Another (the “AfriForum case”), which not only dealt with this sensitive topic, but also clarified an important legal issue – whether an interim interdict can be appealed ...
Facebook recently won a landmark victory in the Ninth Circuit against a company that accessed Facebook’s computers to help users manage their social network accounts. Now the company, Power Ventures, Inc., says that the Ninth Circuit’s decision risks creating “widespread confusion” about when it is a crime to use a computer to access a website. The issue in Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., No. 13-17102 (9th Cir ...
Pierre Denis, Étienne Brassard, Benjamin David Gross and Sibylle Ferreira, whose practices focus on business law, financing and aeronautics, contributed to the development of a Q&A guide entitled Aviation finance in Canada: overview and published in the first edition of Practical Law’s Aviation Finance Global Guide ...
Timeline 20 August 2013: The South African National Assembly passes the Protection of Personal Information Bill [B9D of 2009] (“the Bill”) to give effect to the constitutional right to privacy. 19 November 2013: The Bill is signed into law by President Jacob Zuma and gazetted as the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPI”) ...
