At the end of June, the US entertainment industry won a long fought victory to help bring file swappers to heel ...
The European Parliament dealt a blow to programmers seeking clarity on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions last month when it rejected a draft European Directive on the subject (the "CII Directive") by an overwhelming majority ...
At this moment it makes sense to publish a newsletter exclusively on issues related with the Media sector, not only due to the circumstance that it is a sector that has deserved front page coverage in the Media, particularly in relation to the acquisition movements verified (we need only recall the recent assignment of 49% of the equity of SIC, of 100% of the equity of Lusomundo Serviços or of the put option of a significant part of the equity of Media Capital) but also to the recent legislative
Irish Shell Limited v JH McLoughlin (Balbriggan) Limited, unreported High Court, 4 August 2005, Mr Justice Clarke This case is a good illustration of the application of the legal principles involved in granting an injunction while a related trial is pending (known as an interlocutory injunction). Facts: The plaintiff (Shell) sold a filling station in Balbriggan, County Dublin, to the defendant company in 2004 ...
Introduction A common question for clubs, events, and governing bodies at all levels of sport is what is the best legal structure to use - club or company? In this article we take a practical look at the pros and cons of the most likely options for your club or governing body. 1. Unincorporated Association A. What Is It? ● A group of individuals coming together to carry out a mutual activity, in common language a club ...
‘Spear Tackle’ Case When Brian O’Driscoll was lifted and dropped unceremoniously by All Blacks Keven Mealamu and Tana Umaga in the first Lions test the issue of spear tackling became a hotly debated topic. Spear tackles have been in the news before and a recent Australian case involving a spear tackle in a rugby league match has reignited the debate on when the courts should intervene regarding violence in sport ...
Background The return to democracy in October of 1982 arrived with a “social debt” derived from the days of the Siles Zuazo government, which, by giving way to the workers’ demands, caused Bolivia to enter into a hyperinflationary downward spiral. The Government of Siles Zuazo ended one year before the end of its term (as Mesa did), allowing Dr. Víctor Paz Estensoro to come to power through the general elections of 1985 ...
In the past days, two very important events at the Regional and National Level, honored the ADR mechanisms, specifically the mediation and arbitration proceedings. We refer to the First Central American Congress on Mediation and Arbitration organized by the Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce and the Third National Congress on Mediation organized by the Office of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Division (DIRAC) of the Supreme Court of Justice ...
Germany. November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht. “The Night of Broken Glass.” Nazi secret police and the Hitler youth swarm over Jewish businesses and homes, terrorizing and victimizing helpless individuals all over the country.1 SS leadership orchestrates attacks on every vestige of Jewish culture as “punishment” for fictitious crimes that will never be recognized by the rest of the world ...
The European Union has recently launched a new ccTLD (country code top level domain). Instead of using the various national European ccTLD's, such as .fr for French companies, .de for German companies, and .co.uk for U.K. companies, the EU has made available the .eu suffix as a Community-wide ccTLD. The new domain extension has already proved widely popular, with more than 100,000 applications for domain names filed thus far ...
On 1 May 2004 a new and revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (the TTBER) entered into force - Regulation No. 772/2004. The TTBER will provide block exemptions for IP licensing agreements, ensuring that certain technology transfer agreements are automatically exempt from the application of Article 81(1) of the EC Treaty, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements ...
Internet telephones are set to take the global communications industry by storm. Big names like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay are piling into the market and former state-run telecoms providers like BT are also investing. The technology was first developed by the US Defense Department as part of a research project on interconnection in the 1970s. But until recently only techno-geeks have had the interest and ability to make any use of it. But times have changed ...
At the end of last year, the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill to amend the Federal Radio and Television Law and this has now been turned over to the Senate for consideration ...
Complaints by foreign businesses regarding protection of intellectual property rights in China have been a consistent feature in media reports since large scale foreign investment commenced some 20 years ago. However, China's economic revolution over the same period means that opinions based on negative experiences in the past must be constantly reassessed ...
In a long-awaited judgment, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (“CFI”) partially upheld on December 14, 2005, the European Commission’s decision of July 3, 2001 to block the proposed acquisition of Honeywell International Inc. (“Honeywell”) by General Electric Company (“GE”). In its decision, the Commission had considered that the merger should be blocked for three sets of reasons ...
Since its creation by Decree-Law No. 10/2003 of January 18, the new Portuguese Competition Authority (“PCA”) has analysed more than 150 concentrations. It is said to analyse around 5 concentrations a month. In 2004 and 2005, the PCA reported 130 notified concentrations, 125 of which had issued decisions and 11 cases in which said decisions were reached following second phase proceedings ...
One of the essential components of organizing sport events is the ticketing system. Usually implemented by the Organizing Committees (OC), it is not unusual that these agreements contravene EC Law. In the Italy 1990 World Cup, the OC entered into a worldwide exclusive agreement of ground entrance tickets with a single tour travel agency for the purpose of putting together package tours for the event ...
Dominant companies have special responsibility to ensure that the way they do business doesn’t prevent competition on the merits and does not harm consumers and innovation», said European Competition Commissioner Mário Monti, regarding the Commission’s Microsoft decision dated March 24th, 2004 ...
The interoperability information on Microsoft’s decision deserves special attention by the undertakings that have a dominant position in the market. Intellectual property rights, granted as an incentive for the creation of innovation and as a tool to recoup the investments made by companies, used to be understood as providing several rights to its owners ...
The Police and Justice Bill was put before the House of Commons on 25 January 2006. The main aim of the Bill is to improve the powers and scope of the police force but there are a number of sections which look to update the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA) and in particular to make Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks illegal. DOS attacks can take many forms but are essentially an attempt to disrupt the use of a computer, server or website ...
Although the United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, this guide relates only to the current position in England and Wales because Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own individual legal systems. The rules and procedure of the Civil Courts in England and Wales are contained in the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) which were introduced in 1999 and which lay down the framework within which all civil litigation must be conducted ...
Every day in Mumbai, India, a team of 5,000 couriers deliver, collect and return 200,000 lunch boxes. This massive logistics operation is undertaken with an error rate of less than 1 in 8 million deliveries and without using any information technology. Enormous labour cost disparities enable this manual operation to be undertaken cost-effectively ...
On 14 July 2006, the Hong Kong and Mainland China Governments signed a ground-breaking agreement, rather lengthily entitled "An Arrangement on Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region pursuant to Choice of Court Agreements between Parties Concerned" (Arrangement), under which they agreed to recognise and enforce judgments made in each others courts ...
It is now eighteen months since Freedom of Information legislation came into force and one of the most interesting facets of the Scottish and UK Information Commissioners' decision-making has been the application of the public interest test. In terms of the Freedom of Information legislation there are certain exemptions which, when they apply, can potentially exclude requested information from disclosure ...
