The term «næringsdrivende» (business activity) in the Norwegian Foundation Act shall be understood as activity with taxable profit («erverv til formål») The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries’ work on amending the Norwegian Foundation Act has been going on for several years, cf. proposals for a new Foundation Act in the NOU 2016: 21. Further law amendment proposals have now been proposed in a public hearing ...
When the lockdown was a fact in March 2020, Norwegian courts demonstrated a great willingness to keep the wheels of the Norwegian litigation system going by rapidly transitioning to conducting court hearings through video meetings, and by resolving a larger number of cases through written proceedings. The question going forward is whether experiences gained through the pandemic should change how civil procedures are conducted, and if so, what these changes should be ...
In 2013, the Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, which at the time only held limited secondary patents related to certain antidepressants, was fined EUR 93.7 million by the European Commission for having entered into settlement agreements in 2002 whereby Lundbeck paid generic manufacturers for not challenging its patents. The payments corresponded to the profits that the generic manufacturers could have made if they had successfully entered the market ...
We have this year assisted with numerous new financings, covering everything from new bank syndicates, refinancings, direct lending and bond loans. It has in periods been especially hectic within the shipping, aviation and renewable energy sectors. On the regulatory side, we have had a particular focus on the LIBOR transition ...
What is to come: new ESG reporting requirements Norway introduced legislation presenting social reporting requirements already in 2013 through the introduction of section 3-3 of the Norwegian Accounting Act in anticipation of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive 2014/95 (NFRD) ...
When I was a young lawyer working for the Norwegian Competition Authority, a complaint was received that gave rise to some amusement among the staff at the authority. The complainant argued that the Norwegian football club Viking FK’s signing of the half-decent footballer Ragnvald Soma from rivalling club SK Brann constituted an infringement of Norwegian competition law. Nowadays, competition law in football is no longer a laughing matter ...
The objectives in brief The Government would like to see the aquaculture industry grow, provided that it can do so in a sustainable manner. Statistics produced by the Directorate of Fisheries show that Norway produced and sold a total of just under 1.5 million tonnes of rainbow trout, trout and Atlantic salmon in 2020 ...
Last night, only days ahead of a general election the minority Government in Norway is likely not to win, a proposal for dramatic changes to the upstream petroleum tax regime. It was announced at 18.00 hours Oslo time in a hastily called press conference by the Minister of Finance Mr Sanner (Conservative) and the Minister of Petroleum and Energy Ms Bru (Conservative) ...
The Fit for 55-package To achieve EU’s Paris climate goals, the EU Commission presented in December 2019 the European Green Deal, including a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels) and become carbon neutral by 2050 ...
In January 2020 the first signs of Covid-19 were of a commercial nature. Business activity related to China – which is a large part of the maritime industry in Asia – started slowing down considerably. Projects experienced delays, new ventures were postponed and a general slowdown could be felt throughout the maritime business world. As February and March came around, the first Covid-19 cases started being reported in Singapore ...
The Fit for 55-package To achieve EU’s Paris climate goals, the EU Commission presented in December 2019 the European Green Deal, including a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels) and become carbon neutral by 2050 ...
The Transparency Act requires that enterprises covered by the Act shall carry out and account for due diligence assessments in accordance with Section 4 and Section 5 and answer specific requests for information pursuant to Section 6 and Section 7 ...
Last week, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority announced that they intend to sanction Østre Toten municipality with a fine of NOK 4,000,000 due to the municipality’s non-compliance with the GDPR requirements. The announced sanction follows in the wake of the Data Protection Authority’s investigation of the municipality’s IT systems after it was exposed to a fatal ransomware virus attack in January this year ...
The dispute relates to MV «Cheshire» incident in 2017, where a cargo of 42,000 metric tons of fertiliser was subject to a major decomposition incident off Gran Canaria, during a voyage from Norway to Thailand. The fertiliser was completely damaged and the vessel was declared a total loss. The cargo owners held the ship owners jointly liable for the cargo damage. Bibby Transport Ltd and a number of H&M insurers held the fertiliser producer liable for the damaged vessel ...
The Norwegian government, as owners of the frigate, has held the owners of the tanker liable for the collision and presented a claim of some NOK 13 billion for the loss of the frigate and an additional NOK 770 million for costs related to removing the wreck. Liability is disputed and is due to be adjudged next year. Simonsen Vogt Wiig acts for the owners of the Sola TS ...
1. Introduction Equinor’s pioneering «Hywind Tampen» project, set to become the biggest floating wind farm in the world and scheduled to commence construction in late 2022, will mark the first foray into offshore wind production in Norway. Further, the areas «Utsira Nord» (floating turbines) and «Sørlige Nordsjø II» (bottom fixed turbines), both in the North Sea, have as from 1 January 2021 been opened for development ...
In the guide, Chambers notes: «It’s the leading tech law firm and has now become the leading FinTech law firm,» says an interviewee, who adds: «It’s the only law firm to enhance their FinTech offering consistently.» Our partners Espen Tøndel and Morten Winther defend their individual Band 1 rankings ...
The court of appeal’s decision has been referred to by several law firms as an important clarification that such internal notes are indeed encompassed by privilege and not disclosable. We do of course agree that maintaining trust in the attorney-client privilege is important, but in this context, it was hardly a point that needed clarification ...
The case concerned the use of competitor’s brands in key word advertising on Google. Ikano Bank and two banks in the consumer loan market demanded that Bank Norwegian’s advertising on the Internet using the banks’ characteristics as paid keywords should be prohibited pursuant to the general clause of the Marketing Act. The principle character of the case was demonstrated by the support from Virke, The Federation of Norwegian Enterprise, in favor of the three claimants ...
We have been involved in several noteworthy trademark and unfair competition disputes throughout 2021. In particular, we prevailed before the Supreme Court in a highly cited unfair competition and trademark dispute between Bank Norwegian AS and the three competing banks Komplett Bank, Ikano Bank, and BRA-bank in the «Google Ads» matter ...
The core question of the doctor list case was whether online sharing of user reviews of health professionals on the Norwegian website «Legelisten.no» was necessary to ensure the freedom of expression and the public’s need for information. Furthermore, the Supreme Court had to decide whether those interests outweighed the privacy interests of the persons being reviewed ...
We have in 2021 seen a remarkable (continued) recovery in the Norwegian financial market. This is also evident from the perspective of our banking and financing team. We have assisted our clients with a considerable number of new financings and refinancings, across most sectors. It has especially been hectic within the shipping, aviation and renewable energy sectors and we have seen a steep increase within acquisition financing ...
Trends IT contracts An increasing number of clients have requested aid in purchasing either cloud service technology or offering cloud services to the market. We have seen a significant shift from on-premise solutions (i.e. local servers on customer premises) to public cloud and multi-tenant cloud solutions. Initially, customers pushed suppliers to offer cloud solutions. Now we see the opposite: suppliers pushing customers (who are not always ready for this) into the cloud ...
The transaction pace and volume of 2021 was the silver lining of the Covid-19 overcast, keeping our clients and us busy and productive. Particularly the container ship market has been steaming hot, with rapidly increasing prices and high transaction volume. The bulker market has also seen the highest prices for the last decade, with correspondingly high transaction volume ...
Record number of fines in 2021 At European level, a record number of fines have been issued during 2021 for violating the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since the GDPR entered into force in the EU on 25 May 2018, the supervisory authorities have imposed or notified fines in approx. 900 cases with an accumulated amount of approx. EUR 1.3 billion. As many as 500 of these cases are from 2021 with accumulated fines of as much as EUR 1 ...
