Earlier this year, the European Court of Justice ("CJEU") has thrown out an appeal by Nestlé, which argued that it owns the shape of its famous treat KitKat. Nestlé, the world's largest food and beverage company, has spent more than a decade fighting to trademark the four-fingered wafer shape. However, EJC's most recent ruling could bring an end to the snack's protected European status ...
Earlier this year, the government released a proposal paper: Extending Unfair Contract Terms Protections to Insurance Contracts outlining a model to extend unfair contract term (UCT) provisions to insurance contracts regulated under the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) (IC Act) for consultation. The consultation period closes on 27 July. A high level summary of the proposed model is below ...
Resolution number 217/2018 was published in the Brazilian PTO’s Official Bulletin number 2470, and amends Resolution number 80/2013, which refers to the fast-track examination for patent applications related to products, pharmaceutical processes, equipment and materials related to public health, aiming to accelerate patent applications considered strategic to the Brazilian Public Healthcare System ...
On July 11, 2018, then-U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made a public statement about the agency’s efforts to advance the development of gene therapies.[1] Gottlieb pointed out that the FDA has approved three separate gene therapy products and the agency has issued six scientific guidance documents intended to serve as building blocks of a modern, comprehensive framework for how the FDA can advance the field of gene therapy ...
The Affordable Care Act ("ACA") is alive and well, despite renewed legal challenges and the elimination of the “individual mandate” beginning next year. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the tax penalty for individuals who don’t have health coverage to $0, effective for 2019, employers continue to be subject to penalties for failing to comply with certain ACA rules ...
In recent months a Customs Destination Certificate (CDA, in its Spanish acronym) will be required for medical devices1that do not have a sanitary registration to be imported into Chile. The CDA must be requested and obtained by the importer through the Institute of Public Health’s (ISP, id.) GICONA 2.0 electronic platform, and will require the payment of an official fee corresponding to the service code 4111027, “Customs Destination Certificate, law 18,164” ...
On June 28, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar III announced the ninth year of the national health care fraud takedown. The takedown resulted in the largest government action against health care fraud, which involved more than 600 defendants from over 50 federal districts. The targeted fraud schemes accounted for more than $2 billion in false billings ...
Employers may continue to rely on rounding systems that are neutral in policy and in practice. On June 25, 2018, the California Court of Appeal issued its decision in AHMC Healthcare, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County (Letona), finding legal an employer's use of a payroll system that automatically rounds employee time up or down to the nearest quarter hour ...
Artificial intelligence technologies are extremely promising in healthcare.1 By examining, cross-referencing and comparing a phenomenal amount of data.2 AI lets researchers work more quickly at a lower cost3 and facilitates doctors’ decision-making with regard to diagnosis, treatment and choice of prescription. The integration of AI into the healthcare field can take various forms:4 Management of electronic medical records (e.g ...
This week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued final rules to expand access to “Association Health Plans” for small businesses that are unaffiliated, but are in the same line of business or geographic area. An “Association Health Plan” or “AHP” is a group health plan adopted by members of an employer group or association to provide health coverage for their employees ...
The rule in the case of Royal British Bank v Turquand 1 is commonly known as Turquand’s Rule or the indoor management rule. It stipulates that an “outsider” dealing with a company in good faith is entitled to assume that there has been compliance with the Articles of Association. You can also assume compliance with the by laws of the company and that the “outsider” need not question the formalities of the internal proceedings of a company ...
After a sustained legislative marketing activity that started earlier this year, Government Emergency Ordinance 45/2018 amending and supplementing certain regulatory acts with impact on public procurement was published in the Official Gazette no. 459 ...
On June 5, I wrote about the suspension of the California End of Life Option Act (“EOLOA”) in the wake of Ahn v. Hestrin and several related court proceedings in May. On Friday, June 15, the Fourth District Court of Appeal determined that the EOLOA will in fact remain enforceable pending further proceedings. Thus, eligible Californians who have requested end-of-life drugs in accordance with the EOLOA may continue with the process described in that law ...
Earlier this year, Marcelin Fortier (hereinafter the “applicant”) sued his insurer in a case. The Superior Court rendered a decision1 whereby it reiterates the principles applicable to the notion of increased risk in insurance. The case also insisted on the importance of the questions asked by insurers at the time an insurance contract is purchased. On 8 January 2015, the applicant’s home was seriously damaged by fire ...
For years, corporate policyholders lacked a clear path to recovery against their insurance companies under the Texas bad faith statute. The reason for this uncertainty was that some courts required a showing of an injury independent from the loss of policy benefits as a means of recovery under the bad faith statute ...
On June 1, 2018, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted a Defendant’s Motion to Compel Individual Arbitrations of the two Plaintiffs’ wage claims, dismissed the class claims and stayed the action with regard to the remaining Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) claim. The Court, in Navarrete v. Louis Vuitton, Case No ...
On June 1, 2018, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted a Defendant’s Motion to Compel Individual Arbitrations of the two Plaintiffs’ wage claims, dismissed the class claims and stayed the action with regard to the remaining Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) claim. The Court, in Navarrete v. Louis Vuitton, Case No ...
In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court recently addressed the standard to determine whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee in wage and hour disputes under California’s Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) wage orders. In Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v ...
In 2016, West Virginia had the highest death rate in the country from drug overdoses—primarily caused by opioids—at 52.0 for every 100,000 people.[1] The state was on track to exceed that number in 2017.[2] Seeking to enact policies that not only curb but reverse this upward trend, the West Virginia Legislature introduced a number of bills during the 2018 Regular Legislative Session that sought to address this disturbing epidemic. One of these, S.B ...
A New Development on the Subject (Update as of June 15th) Click Here to Read » A flurry of rulings during the last two weeks of May has generated enormous confusion regarding the status of California's two-year-old End of Life Option Act ("EOLOA"), the law that allows a terminally ill adult with a six-month prognosis to obtain aid-in-dying drugs from a physician, subject to numerous safeguards ...
This article will focus on the experience in practice and the evolution of privatizations of state and socially owned companies in Serbia in the period of transition and will assess the boundaries of arbitrability of disputes that arise out of the termination of privatization agreements. The term arbitrability will be analysed from a broader perspective, as opposed to the traditional and commonly used meaning of this term - whether a certain dispute is suitable for arbitration ...
In the decision in Rustenburg Platinum Mine and SAEWA obo Meyer Bester and Others, the Constitutional Court dealt with the question of whether an employee referring to a colleague as a “swart man” (“black man”), within the facts set out below, constituted misconduct justifying dismissal.The adjacent large 4x4 vehiclesThe employee in this matter, Mr Bester, was employed by the Rustenburg Platinum Mine (the “employer”) ...
“The framework agreement is an agreement whereby the contracting parties define and establish the main rules and conditions that will govern future agreements that will be concluded between them and that are called agreements “for the application” or “for the enforcement” of the framework agreement.” (High Court of Cassation and Justice Decision n0 ...
Barry Buchman, Adrian Azer and Greg Van Houten have joined Haynes and Boone, LLP’s Washington, D.C. office in the Insurance Recovery Practice, expanding the group’s presence coast-to-coast. Partner Barry Buchman brings more than 20 years of experience and looks forward to helping the practice flourish in Washington, D.C., and the East Coast ...