It starts with the best of intentions: A startup medical device company has just sold to a larger enterprise with an established sales team and customer base and no longer needs distributors. A consumer packaged goods company has just bought a brand and needs to transition to a new team of brokers. A growing company is finally ready to take its supply chain captive, including the distribution of products to customers, and no longer needs small distributors or sales representatives ...
he office of the South African Information Regulator recently published its first draft regulations in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (“POPI”), entitled “Regulations relating to the Protection of Personal Information, 2017”. The draft regulations are open for public comment until 7 November 2017 ...
The D.C. Circuit recently rejected a qui tam relator’s attempt to dodge the FCA’s first-to-file bar by amending his complaint. United States ex rel. Shea v. Cellco P’ship, 863 F.3d 923 (D.C. Cir. 2017). The panel’s correct interpretation of the first-to-file bar stymies relators’ ability to keep copycat FCA suits in court. The relator, a telecommunications industry consultant, filed a qui tam suit against Verizon Communications, Inc. in 2007 ...
In Denmark, SKAT charges VAT on radio and TV licence fees. Households pay a licence fee to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), which then pays the VAT amount to SKAT. The VAT amount makes up 20 per cent of the total licence fee.Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that it was unlawful to charge VAT on licence fees in a case concerning Czech radio licence fees ...
Today, 7 August 2017, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (“ICASA”) published a notice stating its intention to amend the End-user and Subscriber Service Charter Regulations.Of particular interest is the insertion of Regulation 8B, which introduces “out-of-bundle billing practices” and the “expiry of data practices”. The regulations intend to govern the validity period and roll-over of data ...
On January 1, 2019, local agencies will be required to comply with new requirements for posting agendas on their websites (AB 2257). The California Brown Act requires that any local agency must post an agenda 72 hours in advance of a regular meeting. If an agency has a website, then the agency is required to post the agenda on their website ...
The Digital Economy Act 2017 introduces a new electronic communications code, intended to facilitate widespread connectivity and address some of the critical issues that currently beset the telecoms industry. The current electronic communications code was issued in 1984 and it was designed to facilitate the installation and maintenance of fixed line communications networks ...
The Chilean Economic Development Agency, Corfo, and the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency, InvestChile, have announced the opening of the first call for national and foreign companies, to express their interest in manufacturing lithium products, such as battery cathodes and electrolytes. Companies that are selected will be guaranteed 25 per cent of US producer Albemarle’s lithium production at the lowest cost available in the market ...
The Oberlandesgericht Celle has recently adopted a decision that is likely to be of particular interest to hospitals which are not, in principle, public contracting authorities within the meaning of the law, but which are used by public authorities to pay more than 50 percent for the construction of hospitals pursuant to Section 99, 4 of the GWB (decision ref. 13 G 8/16). In the decided case, the client planned to modernize a hospital in three construction phases ...
This article looks at the rise of online advertising amongst brand owners and the impact on Google AdWords. Expenditure on internet advertising in the UK rose by over 15% in the second half of 2016 and is set to increase further this year. With the appetite for online and mobile advertising growing amongst brand owners, the role of Google AdWords appears to be increasing in significance ...
Following a Phase II investigation, the Serbian Competition Commission granted conditional clearance to SBB''s takeover of IKOM. This consolidation of leading cable operators in Belgrade represents a landmark case for the Serbian authority and is related to global trends in consolidation of cable network operators, which fosters the investments necessary for improvements to network infrastructure and competition with IPTV, OTT and satellite content providers ...
Resale price maintenance and price-fixing has been and still is under scrutiny by the Croatian Competition Agency (the "Agency"). Carrying on from a number of high-profile cases, in February 2017 the Agency fined Gorenje Zagreb, a subsidiary of Slovenia's premier manufacturer of household appliances for HRK 1,557,000 (approximately EUR 206,000) ...
Industrial facility owners and operators in West Virginia should be aware of new reporting requirements that will soon go into effect. In addition to currently mandated notifications to federal, state, and local agencies after certain events occur, some facilities will soon be required to notify the state within 15 minutes of discovering specific types of emergency events or be subject to a fine of up to $100,000 ...
The recent Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) case of Transnet v Total is important not only for those in the petroleum industry, but also, more generally, when it comes to aspects of competition and discrimination, as well as the impact of changes in the law on existing contracts and vested rights ...
The National Privacy Commission (NPC) has issued the implementing rules and regulations of the Data Privacy Act of 2012. The rules, promulgated on August 24, 2016, will take effect 15 days from publication in the Official Gazette. Download the Client Alert for more information on the new implementing rules for Philippine Data Privacy Act. This alert was authored by SyCipLaw partner Rose Marie M. King-Dominguez and associate Aaron Jeric M. Legaspi ...
The European Commission has opened an in-depth merger investigation into the planned acquisition of Cemex Croatia by Duna-Drava Cement ('DDC'). Registered in Hungary, DDC is jointly controlled by German construction material producers HeidelbergCement and Schwenk. DDC inter alia operates a cement plant in Kakanj, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cemex Croatia, an arm of the international cement heavyweight Cemex, controls three cement plants in the Croatian coastal city of Split ...
Media reports are letting us know that the "Serbia - A Strategic Crossroads between Western and Eastern Europe," conference was held in Paris on 15 September, where the French companies were presented with the political and economic environment in Serbia, as well as with the ensuing investment opportunities and the possibility of financing economic projects ...
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 ...
Recent news reports from Bosnia tell us that the BiH government, represented by the federal prime minister for economic issues and investments, Suvad Osmanagic, paid a visit to Bihac with Ludovico Camozzi, the president and owner of Camozzi – an Italian company that produces industrial automation machinery. The main purpose of this visit was to see Kombiteks, a textile production company that has been in bankruptcy and in and out of operation for the past 15 years ...
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 ...
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 ("CDM 2016") come into force on 1 August 2016. The legislation includes transitional provisions, so that, where a project has already started by 1 August 2016, the Client must appoint a Principal Designer before 1 August 2017 (unless the project ends before that date). In the meantime, the existing CDM Co-ordinator must comply with the duties of a Principal Designer ...
According to latest news reports, Elektroprivreda Crne Gore (EPCG) has shown significant interest in buying a majority stake of the Montenegrin branch of Telekom Srbija – View More
Dear Sir or Madam,We are pleased to provide you with a brief overview of some recent significant amendments to the legislation in the area of data protection and privacy. The said amendments relate to counterterrorism set of bills (so-called “Yarovaya” law), introduction of the notion of news aggregators as well as restrictions on the activity of debt collectors ...
