By decision rendered June 25, 2008, in K. B. & UAB Restoranu Grupe FORTAS v. AB Ragutis (Case No 3K-3-160/2008), the Supreme Court of Lithuania ruled that a component of a trademark that infringes an author’s copyright may not be disclaimed in the trademark registration.The plaintiffs, K. B. and UAB Restoranu Grupe FORTAS, sued one of the oldest breweries in Lithuania, AB Ragutis, for copyright infringement ...
The Government of the Republic of Indonesia ("GOI") understands that Indonesia is becoming part of the globalization of information. Consequently many new forms of legal actions which were not covered by current Indonesian laws and regulations now have to be regulated. On 21 April 2008, after being approved by the House of Representatives, the GOI enacted Law No 11 of 2008 regarding Information and Electronic Transactions ("Law No 11 of 2008") ...
On 16 September 2008, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) gave a preliminary ruling in joined cases C-468/06 - C-478/06 specifying that a refusal by a pharmaceutical undertaking that holds a dominant position on a relevant pharmaceutical market to supply wholesalers with a view to impeding parallel export of such wholesalers from one Member State to other Member States constitutes an abuse of a dominant market position under Article 82 of the EC Treaty ...
Solicitor and commercial specialist Ross Woodham takes a technical and commercial look at Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), as it grows in popularity. VoIP has existed since the early 1980’s, but was only given serious commercial attention in the late 1990’s, since when the use of VoIP-based technology has grown steadily ...
Following consultation with national competition authorities and the public, the European Commission has published enforcement priorities guidelines, which it will follow when applying Article 82 to exclusionary conduct by dominant companies. Throughout the guidelines, the Commission reiterates that Article 82 should protect competition and consumers – rather than individual competitors (an approach previously advocated by Commissioner Kroes) ...
Anybody who has ordered their Christmas shopping online or installed software will have encountered so-called 'clickwrap' agreements. With clickwrap, before being able to complete the order or install the software, you must indicate acceptance of the service provider's terms and conditions – with a simple click on the I agree button – before being able to proceed. This is the stark choice of “take it or leave it” for the digital age ...
Today when financial experts are busy in measuring the depth of present financial turmoil, layman is cursing Governments and experts are blaming sub-prime mortgage payment defaulters but no-body in the economic fraternity could appreciate that it was a policy failure. Moreover, no one in the financial world could imagine the enormous size of the trouble that lending on sub-prime would bring the world’s biggest financial catastrophe of the century ...
Family Intervention Tenancies (FITs) are a new type of tenancy to be introduced by Sections 297-298 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. They will be another tool for registered providers (the new term for both Registered Social Landlords and local authorities to tackle anti-social behaviour ...
What Happened Last week, the chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., India's fourth largest information technology company, admitted to a stunning fraud. Fraudulent entries in the company's financial statements totaled in excess of US$ 1 billion, as compared to the actual financial state of the company. In response to the fraud, DSP Merrill Lynch Ltd., a local affiliate of Bank of America Corp ...
While they are an integral part of most businesses - often with a primary function of delivering cost savings and efficiencies - they must be kept up-to-date to ensure they achieve those aims. So now is a good time to undertake an IT systems review, and look at consolidation and streamlining. Changes to business structures, acquisitions and a system's age are other triggers for an IT stock take ...
GENERAL 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 ‘e-government’. The most important initiatives were the introduction of electronic identity cards (e-ID) for all Belgian citizens over 12, and the federal government’s information web-portal ...
Commission adopts temporary State aid 'credit crunch' framework The European Commission has adopted a temporary state aid framework, designed to help tackle the spiralling negative effects of the 'credit crunch' on the real economy. Under the framework, Member States can - after notifying the Commission - put into effect a range of aid schemes aimed at helping otherwise sound companies that are finding it difficult to access funding ...
What is spamdexing? The Internet contains a lot of information. In 2002, the total number of web pages was estimated at 2.024 million; by 2005 this estimate had risen to 11.5 billion2. The ever- increasing amount of information found on the Internet also has disadvantages. In this jungle of information, it is getting harder and harder to see the wood for the trees ...
With the credit crunch likely to affect every aspect of the global economy, the prospect of declining revenue threatens to erode the profitability of many businesses. So the challenge is to preserve cash and cut costs. But how does this affect IT? Cutting back on IT projects is not necessarily an option. Software is the engine of the modern enterprise. Indeed, for many organisations it is their primary source of competitive advantage ...
Indonesia has been described as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In 2008, the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index stated that Indonesia ranked 130th least transparent out of 180 countries. However, the continued existence of the Corruption Court in Indonesia which has tried many corruption cases and is trying to improve Indonesia’s anti corruption activities, is now under threat ...
Software is part of the day-to-day fabric for most companies. And almost everyone who uses it does so with little or no thought about what happens should it fail, or if it is no longer available. However, the prudent software buyer will consider how to protect against failure of critical or bespoke software, which is where escrow may come in. Be warned, though ...
Virtually every business has some sort of website or presence on the internet, and it is often an integral part of the business. At the same time, many organisations use bespoke or customised software internally on a day-to-day basis, and undoubtedly attribute significant value to these assets, not least because the development of them probably required a significant investment via a third party developer providing the software ...
In early 2008, 'green computing' and the idea that companies were going to need to implement new measures to improve their green credentials was one of the hot topics in IT. You might have been forgiven for thinking that environmental concern would be among the first casualties of the credit crunch and the resulting recession ...
The establishment and operation of many Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) involves cooperation amongst industry participants, including those who may be competitors in other aspects of their businesses. It is very important that participants in CRCs remember that the prohibitions against anti-competitive conduct in the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (TPA) will apply to the CRC collaboration ...
The long-awaited and controversial Equality Bill (the Bill) has been published and laid before Parliament. Public consultations are scheduled on several of the measures outlined in this very significant piece of legislation, though it is not expected to come into force until the end of next year. With a General Election likely in June 2010, it remains to be seen how quickly the Bill will progress and how much of it will survive ...
The intention of this brief note is to present an analysis of internal crises within law firms and the way of avoiding them. We define a crisis as an unexpected and grave difficulty or danger (“a time of intense difficulty or danger”). As a matter of fact the greek origin of crisis (“krisis”) meant “decision” (from “krinein” – decide) ...
In two recent cases (Coditel and Stadtreinigung Hamburg), the ECJ dealt with the so-called “in-house exemption” in procurement matters ...
What are the limits on national public procurement law to prevent collusion between tenderers in award procedures? This was the question the ECJ dealt with in its recent Assitur judgment (C-538/07).The facts of the Assitur case were as follows. Three tenderers passed the qualitative selection phase and were admitted to the final procedure ...
The quality of public services in Indonesia is expected to improve after the issuance of Law No. 25 of 2009 dated 18 July 2009 regarding Public Services (“PS Law”) ...
