Member Articles

Alternative dispute resolution benefits the public no matter what the outcome Attorney-General Robert McClelland continues to pus alternative dispute resolution after launching the report A Strategic Framework for Access to Justice in the Federal Civil Justice System late last year. One of its main recommendations is to encourage Commonwealth agencies to use ADR ...

The majority of disputes are settled before trial, and an increasing number are settled before proceedings are issued. The Civil Procedure Rules that provide the framework for litigation in England and Wales encourage parties to consider alternative ways to resolve their differences. There are a variety of techniques that can be utilised to achieve an early and cost effective settlement. Collectively, these are known as ADR ...

Website accessibility is a requirement of the Equality Act 201.  The first of a two-part article explaining Equality Act 2010 to websites. In our last article, Website accessibility: Industry standards and best practice, we considered how the Equality Act 2010 would be implemented, and considered what the new BSI Standard for website accessibility might look like ...

Concents : * Technology Licences in the Event of Bankruptcy * New Quebec Business Corporations Regime * The Shareholder Agreement: the "Specifications" of the Private Corporation Shareholder Technology Licences in the Event of Bankruptcy Sive Burns [email protected] The owner of a technology protected by an intellectual property right (copyright or patent) or protected by secret (trade secret) may grant a licence to a licensee ...

The AGCOM (the Italian Media Authority) has recently published (on December 28th, 2010) two resolutions concerning the broadcasting services of audio and/or video contents (so-called “audiovisual media services”) in “linear” mode (“streaming” or “simulcast” services: Resolution n ...

The Federal government’s legislation to control spam and other ills of the electronic age with the oh-so-catchy title of  An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and

1. How can the government’s attitude and approach to internet issues best be described? The attitude of the Belgian government can be described as positive and their approach is proactive. In 2003, the Belgian authorities announced the introduction of ‘egovernment’ ...

In the second of a two-part look at issues arising out of the tender process we consider what can happen when that process is poorly run. Part 1 of the series can be found at IT tendering: Leveraging the benefits. A typical tender process involves the customer analysing and documenting its requirements in a Request for Proposals (RFP) to which interested suppliers will prepare a response ...

In a recent article we looked at some of the employment risks for customers associated with cloud computing. Following on from Cloud computing: Employment law implications, we now consider how best to assess the other risks associated with cloud computing ...

A new version of the well-known International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Incoterms® becomes effective on 1 January 2011. EXW, FCA, DDP, FOB and CIP – are some of the three-letter abbreviations of Incoterms® commonly found in sales and delivery agreements around the world ...

The word litigation usually strikes fear into the hearts of the business community.  Litigation can be time-consuming and expensive.  Badly-managed litigation is a very painful experience indeed.  Managing litigation risk is therefore of huge importance for businesses.  But the challenge doesn’t start at the Court door ...

IT projects: It’s a team game 28 September 2010 IT projects have a knack of over-running for significant periods, requiring ‘out-of-scope’ changes half way through, and consequently going over budget. Although any project will develop and evolve over time, such problems can be minimised through sensible project management methods. It is not uncommon for IT projects to last several months, if not years, from conception to completion ...

Getting the Deal Through - e-Commerce 2011 Getting the Deal Through published a fully revised and updated seventh edition of e-Commerce, a volume in GTDT's series of annual reports published by Law Business Research. This  publication provides international analysis in key areas of law and policy for corporate counsel, cross-border legal practitioners and business people ...

Social networks: Hype and its legal consequences published in: WirtschaftsBlatt,Author: Dr. Axel Anderl, LL.m., Mag. Martina Schmid Social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace or XING are an increasing popularity. It has never been so easy to operate social networking ...

Dear Sirs, On August 2, 2010 the Federal Law “On the alterations to the Arbitrazh Procedural Code of the Russian Federation” (“The Law”) was published ...

On June 28, 2010, the United States Supreme Court announced its decision on Bilski v. Kappos regarding what inventions are eligible for patent protection. The decision affirms that business methods are patentable, although the specific business methods at the center of the case are not. While stating that no single test governs the issue, the Court approved of the use of the “machine-or-transformation test” that the Federal Circuit had distilled from earlier Supreme Court cases ...

A new feature of the civil justice reform system came into effect on 1 January 2010, nine months into the revamp. Steven Yip and James Yeung report that the introduction of mediation, as prescribed by Practice Direction 31 ('PD 31'), is expected to have a profound impact on the way parties conduct cases ...

In 2010, the legal services industry—and for that matter almost every industry—faces a new landscape that requires not only a different way of thinking but also a different way of doing business to ensure short-term survival and longterm success ...

Shoosmiths - EnglandWhat is disclosure? It is the stage of a dispute when each party is required to disclose to the other party the documents relevant to the issues in dispute. It normally takes place after each party has set out its position in their statement of case ...

Just one day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit indicated that it would consider the current state of the inequitable conduct doctrine en banc in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson and Co., a split panel of the Federal Circuit issued a decision in the case of Avid Identification Systems, Inc. v. Crystal Import Corp. affirming a lower court’s finding of inequitable conduct ...

Legislative Developments In July 2009, new rules came into force in Italy concerning class actions brought by consumers and final users who are the victims of unfair trade practices or anti-competitive conduct. Under the new rules, collective damages actions may be brought either by individual class members or by associations empowered by them or committees of which they are members for claims based on breaches of competition law ...

The music, film and broadcast industries look set to get the robust protection from illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing they crave, as the Digital Economy Bill moves closer to becoming law. It passed its third reading at the House of Commons on 7 April ...

Dear Sirs, On March 11, 2010 the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev introduced in the State Duma the draft of Federal law No. 341071-5 “On alternative dispute resolution procedure by way of mediation (a mediation process)” ( “the Draft law”). It is to be applicable from January 1, 2011. View More