Adopted in 2000, Regulation FD generally prohibits public companies and personnel acting on their behalf from selectively disclosing material, nonpublic information to certain groups, such as brokers, investment advisers, analysts and shareholders who are likely to trade on information, without concurrently making widespread public disclosure ...
Technology-rich South African companies and indeed inventors who have taken the brave step of filing foreign patents -will know that there are two ways of getting patent protection in Europe. The first is the national route, in other words filing a patent directly in the country or countries of interest. The second route is that of the European Patent ...
The BBC recently published a piece called ‘3D Printing Will Be the Next Big Copyright Fight’. It said this: ‘That moment we’ve been hearing about for years – the one where futuristic-sounding 3D printing becomes ubiquitous – is actually upon us.’ It dealt with a topic that’s also referred to as ‘additive manufacturing’ ...
It’s well known that computer programs enjoy copyright protection - many have also been patented, but that’s another story and I’m not going to deal with that here. The South African Copyright Act has protected computer programs as a specific category of works since 1992, although prior to that they were protected as ‘literary works’ ...
You’ve heard of Victoria’s Secret, right! The US company is, of course, a well-known purveyor of lingerie, a product for which there is clearly a great deal of demand: Victoria’s Secret has some 1 000 stores throughout the world, and its turnover in 2010 was an impressive US$5.5 billion. In 2012 Victoria’s Secret lodged an objection to a domain name registration for www.victoriassecrets.com ...
Did you see the recent Carte Blanche piece called ‘Stripper Scam’ (first shown on 4 February 2013)? The one with‘bare-butt butlers’showing off their assets at ‘bachelorette parties’. The one where presenter Devi Sankaree Govender subjected viewers to a host of dreadful puns: thevillain with‘bare-faced cheek’, finally being ‘caught with his pants down’ ...
There was an interesting decision in the US recently about the intellectual property (IP) implications of posting a photo on Twitter. The facts were that a professional photographer by the name of Daniel Morel – a man who has apparently spent over 25 years in Haiti – posted dramatic photos of the earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 shortly after the event ...
The collapse of systems integrator and reseller 2e2 in January has highlighted the danger for clients of companies such as 2e2, and focuses attention on how to deal with this type of situation. At a recent Shoosmiths event, data, IT and banking lawyers shared practical experience of the risks and potential remedies associated with insolvency of IT suppliers ...
On February 26, 2013, the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") issued a Request for Information ("RFI") to gather comments regarding the development of a framework to reduce cybersecurity risks to critical infrastructure. As we previously reported, the Obama Administration’s executive order, Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (the "Executive Order"), released on February 12, 2013, directs NIST to coordinate development of this framework ...
It’s well known that computer programs enjoy copyright protection - many have also been patented, but that’s another story and I’m not going to deal with that here. The South African Copyright Act has protected computer programs as a specific category of works since 1992, although prior to that they were protected as ‘literary works’ ...
1. 1 Please describe the: (a) telecoms; (b) audio-visual media distribution; and (c) internet infrastructure sectors in the Philippines, in particular by reference to each sector’s: (i) importance (e.g. measured by annual revenue); (ii) 3-5 most important companies; (iii) whether they have been liberalised and are open to competition; and (iv) whether they are open to foreign investment ...
Data Privacy Act of 2012 The Data Privacy Act (Republic Act No. 10173) seeks to protect the confidentiality of “personal information.” The latter is defined as “any information whether recorded in material form or not, from which the identity of an individual is apparent or can be reasonably and directly ascertained by the entity holding the information, or when put together with other information would directly and certainly identify an individual ...
What it’s aboutThe Data Privacy Act (Republic Act No. 10173) seeks to protect the confidentiality of “personal information.” The latter is defined as “any information whether recorded in material form or not, from which the identity of an individual is apparent or can be reasonably and directly ascertained by the entity holding the information, or when put together with other information would directly and certainly identify an individual ...
What it’s aboutThe Cybercrime Prevention Act (Republic Act No. 10175) penalizes “cybercrimes”— acts that fall into any of these major categories:a) offenses against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems (e.g., illegal access, data interference);b) computer-related offenses (e.g., computer-related forgery and fraud);c) content-related offenses (e.g ...
The Government finally issued Government Regulation No. 82 of 2012 9regarding the Implementation of Electronic Systems and Electronic Transactions (“Regulation 82”) for Law No. 11 of 2008 regarding Electronic Information and Electronic Transactions (“Law No.11”). Regulation 82 sets out significant requirements in relation to electronic registration/certification, electronic systems, electronic transactions, electronics agents, electronic signatures and domain names ...
A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision addressed a number of thorny issues relevant to commercial real estate disputes including whether a Plaintiff must mitigate its damages where it has made a claim for specific performance of a real estate contract. The decision has wide-ranging implications for commercial real estate developers ...
On December 28, 2012, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (“NPC”) of the People’s Republic of China passed the Resolution of the Standing Committee of the NPC Relating to Strengthening the Protection of Information on the Internet (the “Regulations”). The Regulations contain significant and far-reaching requirements applicable to the collection and processing of electronic personal information via the Internet ...
On November 16, 2012, European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx published an Opinion on the European Commission’s Communication on cloud computing (part of the Commission’s broader cloud computing strategy) ...
On 3 December 2012 Guernsey brought into force its new image rights legislation which allows, for the first time anywhere in the world, for such rights to be registered. Gary Assim, Shoosmiths In essence this law has created a new form of intellectual property right for anyone, anywhere in the world, who is famous, or might be in the future, to protect their image by registering it ...
According to a recent article by Shoosmiths, the cloud software market generated $22 billion in revenue in 2011, and expects growth to $67.3 billion by 2016 Alongside the benefit of cloud computing, however, lies a lack of transparency for cloud customers, causing legitimate concerns about how they can comply with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) ...
What's all this about penguins, pandas and search engine optimisation? Optimising websites to rank highly in Google search results is a lucrative industry. For years, businesses have employed search engine optimisation (SEO) providers to boost rankings ...
A sports agent by nature is a mediator or ‘go-between’ between the player, and in most instances, a sports club. In general, the agent provides a service, for example, the recruitment of a player, who will enter into a legal relationship with a club. Often a club will pay a sports agent a recruitment fee, which will normally include a signing-on fee that has to be paid over by the sports agent to the player ...
On November 19, 2012, 40 German advertising associations launched the “German Data Protection Council for Online Advertising,” a new initiative to coordinate and enforce self-regulation in the German online behavioral advertising (“OBA”) sector. The initiative is linked to the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (“EDAA”), which manages the self-regulation efforts of the European online advertising industry ...
On November 10, 2012, the German working group on technical and organizational data protection matters published guidelines (in German) on the technical and organizational separation requirements for automated data processing on shared IT systems (the “Guidelines”). The working group is part of the Conference of the German Data Protection Commissioners, which recently concluded its 84th Conference in Frankfurt (Oder) ...
On October 30, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled that an opt-out confirmation text sent by Citibank (South Dakota), N.A. (“Citibank”) did not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). Under a “common sense” interpretation, the court determined that Citibank’s opt-out text does not demonstrate the type of invasion of privacy the TCPA seeks to prevent ...
