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Lewis Silkin acknowledged in The Times: Common law libel rules unaffected
17 October 2017Lewis Silkin have been acknowldged in an article for The Times which discusses a number of cases including Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd, Lachaux v Evening Standard Ltd & Lachaux v AOL (UK) Ltd.
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Alex Kelham comments for Sports Market Intelligence: The lion's share: Premier League v UKIP
13 October 2017Alex Kelham’s article has been published in SportCal which discusses the new UKIP lion (logo) and its possible trade mark infringement on The Premier League.
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Brands and IP newsnotes - issue 6
12 October 2017Welcome to the 6th edition of our Brands & IP newsnotes put together to bring you the latest, and most interesting legal developments affecting intellectual property law. In this issue we cover; battlegrounds on Amazon listings, whether prestigious brands can prevent their resellers from selling online, the EU's position paper on IP rights, an quick guide on rights for designs, and trade mark infringements.
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Brexit: EU position paper on IP rights (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017On 6 September 2017 the European Commission published its wish list for how it hoped IP rights would be treated by the EU and the UK after Brexit. Five general recommendations were made, as follows:
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Servicing trade mark infringement (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The use of a third party trademark to provide information or describe a service being offered does not necessarily constitute trademark infringement. Where the use of a trade mark goes beyond that and creates an impression in the average consumer that the particular service is authorised by the trade mark owner, this will constitute an infringement.
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Coty: Keeping up appearances (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017Can a prestigious brand prevent its resellers from selling online? The question was answered firmly in the negative by the European Court of Justice in 2011. In that case, the court said that the French pharmaceutical and cosmetic brand Pierre Fabre could not impose an outright ban on their resellers from selling online.
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Vexed vexillologists: New battleground on Amazon listings (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court recently found in favour of a brand whose Amazon listing had been high-jacked by a competitor. In very simple terms, manufacturers can create listings for their products on Amazon. Third parties can then add themselves to those listings, and whoever offers the cheapest price is automatically presented as the seller.
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Watching out for individual character (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The EU General Court has dismissed an action to invalidate a Registered Community Design held by Nike for electronic wristbands. The case serves as a useful reminder of the principles to be applied in assessing whether a design has sufficient individual character to be registered.
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Equivalent ways to infringe a patent (Eli Lilly v. Actavis) (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6))
12 October 2017The Supreme Court has had to determine to what extent courts should depart from the literal wording of a patent claim and consider whether equivalent means to those literally specified in the claim would infringe a patent.
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Ask About … Retail, Fashion & Hospitality
11 October 2017Many of our clients in the retail, fashion and hospitality sector face similar HR issues. Each month one of the members of our team will identify an issue, ask how you would deal with it and provide our advice. This month we asked Lucy...
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When does a chat with competitors become illegal?
09 October 2017We all have discussions with counterparts in our industries. Those conversations are often vital to share knowledge, address common issues, and lobby for change. However, conversations with competitors can easily stray into dangerous territory, leading to potentially cartel behaviour.
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International data transfers - are model clauses now under threat?
05 October 2017Many of you will remember Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who in 2015 successfully brought a case to the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) that resulted in the “safe harbor” - the agreement that allowed the transfer of EU citizens’ data to the US - being declared invalid.
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Brexit: from a slow drip to a full-on leak
27 September 2017On 5 September 2017, the Home Office Post-Brexit Immigration Document was leaked to the public. The document – the exact publication date of which we do not know – provides a screenshot of government policy towards EU nationals and their non-EU family members. The document talks about how those individuals will be affected at three separate stages: (1) those in the UK ‘before exit’, (2) those who come to the UK during the ‘implementation phase’, and (3) those who arrive ‘after the implementation period’.
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Court of Appeal orders Hong Kong’s Immigration Department to accommodate same-sex partners as dependants
26 September 2017In a unanimous decision made on 25 September, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Immigration Department’s refusal to issue a dependant visa to the lesbian civil partner of a British expat was not rational.
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Sean Dempsey comments for The Telegraph: How much regulation is needed to secure an open economy?
26 September 2017Sean Dempsey commented in an article for The Telegraph discussing how businesses and regulatory bodies must not lose sight of workers’ rights and data protection as the way they work is transformed by technology.
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Autonomous Vehicles and the Built Environment
25 September 2017Self-driving cars are on their way. The trailblazers (Tesla, Google, Uber) are conducting increasingly sophisticated tests in real-world conditions. The traditional car makers (General Motors, BMW) are acquiring start-ups or partnering with established tech companies to boost their capabilities. Ford recently promoted the head of its smart mobility unit to chief executive and aims to have a mass market fully autonomous car by 2021.
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Employee liability information is not limited to contractual matters
25 September 2017The Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) has ruled that the employee liability information (“ELI”) that a transferor is required to provide under regulation 11 of TUPE is not limited to contractual entitlements. In addition, the EAT decided that there is no obligation on the transferor to set out whether any entitlement is contractual or not.
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TUPE and collective agreements - static vs dynamic debate revisited
25 September 2017A judgment of the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) in a German case has reconsidered the effect of a TUPE transfer on employment terms governed by a collective agreement. The issue to be determined was whether, once a business had transferred, the new employer was compelled to apply the terms and conditions arising from collective agreements adopted after that transfer.
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Service provision changes – determining principal purpose of organised grouping
25 September 2017The EAT has given guidance on the correct approach to determining the “principal purpose” of an organised grouping of employees within the meaning of the service provision change (“SPC”) rules under TUPE.
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Gender pay gap reporting – the story so far
25 September 2017It’s a little over five months since the first “snapshot date” of 5 April 2017 and less than seven months before the final deadline for employers with 250 or more UK staff to publish their first ever gender pay gap reports without incurring the wrath of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This seems as good a point as any to ask the question “Where are we now?”