The law governing companies globally, and in India, recognises a company to be a personality, distinct from its shareholders. In the celebrated case of Salomon v Salomon & Co. Ltd[1]., Lord Halsbury LC, had stated:“[A] company must be treated like any other independent person with its rights and liabilities [legally] appropriate to itself … whatever may have been the ideas or schemes of those who brought it into existence.”1 ...
The Regional Labor Court (LAG) of Baden-Württemberg, in its ruling of December 20, 2018 (Ref. 17 Sat 11/18), granted an employee a comprehensive right to information against his employer with regard to all personal data collected about his person. The right to information was explicitly confirmed in relation to personal data resulting from internal investigations and data from potential whistleblowers ...
Companies will need to take appropriate steps in the future to protect their secrets. The new law on the protection of trade secrets places greater demands on the sensitivity of secrets to this extent. Whistleblowers can also reveal trade secrets with impunity - one more reason to set up a whistleblower hotline. Reverse engineering will be a permissible way of acquiring a trade secret in the future ...
Although it is included in Indonesia’s annual national legislation program(Program Legislasi Nasional/Prolegnas)so far, the draft new Indonesian Competition Law which will replace Law No. 5 of 1999 on The Prohibition against Monopolistic Practices and Unfair Business Competition (the “Competition Law”), has not been passed ...
As seen in Bank Director A bank’s board of directors must answer to a variety of constituencies, including shareholders, regulatory agencies, customers and employees. At times those constituencies may have competing interests or priorities. Other times, what may appear to be competing interests are actually variations of aligned interests ...
Are the two trade marks confusingly similar? It’s the question that’s most commonly asked in trade mark law. The issue of confusion can arise in the context of registration: should the trade mark be registered in the face of the earlier trade mark? It can also arise in the context of use: does the trade mark that’s being used infringe the registered trade mark? The two cases that we will consider here both involve registration ...
TheBig Maccase has enjoyed considerable publicity – many publications have reported on it, includingWorld IP Review. The decision shines a spotlight on some important aspects of trade mark law. In this case, an Irish company called Supermac’s applied for the cancellation of the EU trade mark registration for Big Mac (belonging to McDonald’s) on the basis of non-use ...
The much awaited revised new regulations governing who qualifies for the FLSA white collar exemption has finally been revealed by the Department of Labor. It did so on March 8 by publishing anNPRM(“Notice of Proposed Rule Making”). In December of 2016, a Texas federal court entered a nationwide injunction halting the implementation of new regulations which would have dramatically increased the salary threshold for exempting most white collar employees from overtime ...
On January 19, 2019, federal Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore of the Northern District of California denied the Government’s application for a search warrant that sought: “all digital devices” present at a California residence; (Order at 3), and “any individual present at the time of the search to press a finger (including thumb) or utilize other biometric features…for the purposes of unlocking the digital devices found in order to permit a search of
Legal networks allow independent firms to act as a unified group for better client service. Lawyer Sasha Stepanova was working just hours before Christmas to close a deal for a corporate client when a situation arose where she urgently needed a Dutch lawyer to review a new document. There was no time to spare. As a member of the World Services Group (WSG) law firm network, she called WSG member Johan Boeren directly in the Netherlands ...
Goal Is to Improve Accuracy and Reduce Potentially Invalid Registrations On February 14, 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued aNotice of Proposed Rulemaking(“NPRM”) to require foreign domiciled trademark applicants and registrants to be represented by a licensed U.S. attorney at the PTO. The comment period on the NPRM is open until March 18, 2019 ...
At the end of the last year, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (the “Supreme Court”) adopted the Ruling dated December 25, 2018 No ...
On 10 January 2019, the Indonesian Government enacted GovernmentRegulation No. 1 of 2019 on Export Proceeds from the Exploitation,Management, and/or Processing of Natural Resources (“GR 1/2019”) ...
The Anton Piller order is an extraordinary thing. It’s essentially an evidence-preserving legal mechanism. It allows a party that feels that their rights are being infringed to approach the court as a matter of urgency and without notice to the alleged wrongdoer for an order sanctioning a raid of the premises of the alleged wrongdoer in order to find and preserve evidence that it believes will otherwise be destroyed ...
A recent judgment in a trade mark opposition in Seychelles is worth a look, not only because it involves a major international brand, but because IP judgments are quite rare in certain African countries. The opposition The facts were that a Seychelles company called Intelvision Limited applied to register the trade mark Intelvision (a stylised version of the word together with an antenna logo) for services in class 38 ...
The Mauritian Government announced in its 2018-2019 budget speech major changes to be brought to the Mauritian Financial Services sector which were then confirmed within the enactment of the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2018 on 9 August 2018. This was the result of intense pressure in recent years for Mauritius to align itself with global norms and transparency standards ...
What exactly is unlawful competition? Unlawful competition is often lumped together with IP, and indeed there are obvious links: the common law action of passing off (closely related to trade marks) is a species of unlawful competition; and unlawful competition cases often involve technology, trade secrets and the misuse of confidential information, thus potentially bringing them within the scope of patent law and copyright law ...
Introduction The United Arab Emirates (the UAE) promulgated legislation to specifically address the regulation of competition (being Federal Law 4 of 2012, or the Competition Law) several years ago but until recently, it has been the case that the requisite implementing regulations and processes were not in place. This is no longer the case ...
What’s happened? After much media coverage, Cabinet Decision 56 of 2018 (the Decision) has been gazetted which introduces new long term residency visas to, amongst others, the following four categories of persons in the UAE:1. investors;2. entrepreneurs;3. individuals with specialised talents and researchers in various fields of science and knowledge; and4. honours students with promising scientific potential ...
One of the biggest challenges that micro, small and medium enterprises face when trying to settle in and achieve success as profitable businesses is to obtain capital and sources of financing ...
Let us draw your attentionthat Russian legal entities are obliged topossessinformation about their ultimate beneficial owners (hereinafter the “UBO”) in accordance with para.1art. 6.1 of the Federal Law No. 115-FZ “On prevention the legalization (laundering) of proceeds of crime and financing of terrorism” ...
Notwithstanding the optics of a healthy U.S. economy, beneath the surface there are many U.S. companies and consumers that have become casualties of the “trade war” with China. The first salvo in this trade war was fired in January 2018, and was followed by additional shots later in 2018 as the United States imposed punishing tariffs that affect hundreds of billions of dollars of trade with China and the rest of the world ...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced it will issue a new Final Rule on January 31, 2019, reversing the order by which the USCIS will select H-1B applications submitted under the statutory/numerical cap and introducing an electronic registration requirement for employers filing H-1B cap-subject petitions. The reverse-selection provisions of the rule will go into effect on April 1, 2019 ...
