Referring to Newsletter Issue No. 12 in relation to the Health Bill, the new Health Law No. 36 of 2009 was finally issued on 13 October 2009. Under the Health Law, mothers must breastfeed their babies exclusively from birth until 6 months old. It is expected that family members, the Government, Regional Governments and communities will support lactating mothers by providing time and space for them to breastfeed their babies in work places and public areas ...
2009 Prediction: Further penetration of Software as a Service (SaaS) Australia will see a proliferation of businesses adopting SaaS in 2009. With no hardware, maintenance or upfront capital costs, SaaS will be seen as ideal for companies looking to control their costs in an uncertain economic environment. Some analysts predict that the global SaaS industry may be worth as much as A$10.7 billion during 2009 ...
Proposals to extend the scope of freedom of information in Scotland will, if accepted, expand an existing risk to the commercial confidentiality of companies bidding for public sector contracts ...
Website owners have had a legal duty to make their websites accessible to the disabled for more than a decade. With the new Equality Act 2010 reinforcing those duties later this year, now is a good time for website owners to remind themselves of their duties and prepare for the new Act ...
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 ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all U.S. patent infringement appeals, issued an order on April 26, 2010 requesting briefs from the parties in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson, and Co. (appeal no. 2008-1511) to consider en banc the standards by which courts should find “inequitable conduct ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all U.S. patent infringement appeals, issued an order on April 26, 2010 requesting briefs from the parties in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson, and Co. (appeal no. 2008-1511) to consider en banc the standards by which courts should find “inequitable conduct ...
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is seeking public comment on a proposed three-track patent examination initiative that would provide applicants with greater control over the speed at which their applications are examined. The proposed initiative aims to reduce overall pendency of patent applications by providing applicants with alternative timing systems for the examination of their patent applications ...
Most patent applicants can now accelerate the examination of a select number of patent applications in exchange for abandoning an equal number of unexamined, pending applications, according to an announcement issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) on June 24, 2010 ...
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 ...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Treasury have released another set of interim final regulations (the “IFR”) regarding the coverage of preventive care without cost sharing. As with all guidance, the IFR cannot be considered in isolation ...
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 ...
Spotlight on Corporate Governance One of the impacts of the global financial crisis on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been an increased spotlight on corporate governance standards in the UAE. The Ministry of Economy published Ministerial Resolution No. 518 of 2009 (MR 518) which provides for enhanced corporate governance rules and discipline standards for UAE Public Joint Stock Companies (PJSC) ...
The hospital has lost lengthy legal proceedings about the uninsured patients from the governments of the Netherlands Antilles and Curaçao. The governments are not obligated to write a “blank check”, as it were, for the costs Sehos had to incur for uninsured persons that cannot be recovered, according to judge Van Schendel yesterday ...
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 ...
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 ...
Hunton & Williams announced today the launch of its new website — the Hunton & Williams Health Care Reform Center, huntonhealthcarereform.com ...
Recent Federal Circuit Decision on Section viii Carve Outs and Inducement By C. Kyle Musgrove, Partner On November 1, 2010, a divided 2-1 panel of the Federal Circuit issued a decision in AstraZeneca LP v. Apotex, Inc. that addresses inducement of infringement in the context of a Section viii "carve out" under 21 U.S.C. § 355(j)(2)(A)(viii) and 21 C.F.R. § 314.92(a)(1) ...
On April 28, 2005, the Chambre des notaires du Québec filed a petition to declare unconstitutional and of no force and effect requirements issued by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) under sections 231.2 and 231.7 as well as subsection 5 of section 232(1) of the Income Tax Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. 1 (5th Supp.) (ITA) to obtain documents or information prima facie protected by professional secrecy ...
KSB partner Martin Šolc, who specializes in advisory on transactions in the field of mergers and acquisitions, has also been performing professional activities for a long time with the International Bar Association (IBA), a leading organization of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies, bringing together more than forty thousand attorneys and one hundred and ninety-seven chambers of attorneys on all continents ...
After decades of debate, US healthcare reform became a reality in 2010 when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March. Yet public opinion remains sharply divided on the merits of this sweeping legislation, both in terms of its ability to address the problems of access to, and the rising cost of, healthcare services and in terms of the financial burden on the federal and state governments of implementing ACA ...
In Sweden, the directive has been implemented through amendments to the Medical Devices Act (1993:584), and through the regulation which the Medical Products Agency has issued in connection with this Act and the directive. The revised directive contains some clarifications but also some news ...
As part of the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system and ambulatory surgery center payment system final rule for calendar year 2011 (the “Final Rule”), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued final regulations that implement the changes that were made to the whole hospital exception by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care Education and Reconciliation Act of 2010 (collectively, the “Acts
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 ...
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 ...
