ASA reiterates that card surcharges must be well indicated
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint that it received in relation to a website that was not clear about credit and debit card surcharges. The website had added a £1 or £2...
View ArticleBEREC publishes draft net neutrality guidelines
The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) has published draft guidelines on how end users are to be informed about the way their Internet service is managed within the...
View ArticleOHIM and European Union General Court should have considered whether wine...
Freixenet applied to register the features of a wine bottle as a European Community Trade Mark. In particular, it claimed the colour “golden matt” and described the trade mark as a “white polished...
View ArticleSupreme Court awards patent for human protein and discovery of underlying...
HGS made a patent application for the human protein Neutrokine-alpha and the discovery of its underlying gene sequence. Eli Lilly challenged the patent application in the High Court and the European...
View ArticleEU Justice Minister signals massive overhaul towards far stricter data...
Businesses will need to obtain explicit prior consent from individuals before processing data about them and give them the right to have their data deleted at any time especially if they post data on...
View ArticleAngler shows folly as trade mark angles for a victory in trade mark...
Fox had a European Community Trade Mark for “STALKER” in respect of fishing equipment. Folly sold fishing equipment on the Internet under the name “STALKER” but replacing the “T” with a picture of an...
View ArticleEuropean Court says Belgian Internet service provider does not have to block...
Scarlet, a Belgian Internet service provider, should not be required to block the content of its website users as a measure to prevent them from infringing copyright in music belonging to Sabam’s music...
View ArticleEuropean Commission investigates whether Apple’s arrangements with book...
The European Commission is investigating whether Apple’s arrangements with book publishers for the sale of e-books amount to anti-competitive agreements contrary to Article 101 of the Treaty on the...
View ArticleGovernment proposes change in law to make UK a better place to carry out drug...
The UK Government would like to change the law to make the UK a more amenable place to carry out clinical trials. There is an exemption from breach of patented pharmaceutical products when the use is...
View ArticleMicrosoft sues Comet over reproduction of back-up copies of software for users
Microsoft is suing Comet for alleged copyright infringement over what the software giant claims is nearly 100,000 counterfeit copies of Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs. It has alleged that...
View ArticleCopyright levies go up for hotels in latest European Court of Justice ruling...
Following a referral from an Irish court for a ruling, the European Court of Justice has interpreted European Union copyright law in such a way so as to mean that hotels that provide televisions or...
View ArticleCBI attacks “unworkable” EU data protection proposals
The Confederation of British Industry has attacked the European Commission’s proposals for new data protection laws as “unworkable” and said that they add complexity, cost and uncertainty. They would...
View ArticleFootball fixture list commercial arm loses out to bookmakers as fixture lists...
It has been the case for a few years under European Union law that there is no database right protection in compiling sports fixture lists as the investment involved in the data is in the creation of...
View ArticleEuropean Parliament votes in favour of allowing non-commercial use of orphan...
A European Parliament committee has voted in favour of allowing orphan works to be made available online for non-commercial use. An orphan work is copyright material which has no identified owner. The...
View ArticleEuropean Commission investigates whether Motorola refused to license...
The European Commission has opened up an investigation as to whether Motorola has abused its dominant position by allegedly refusing to fairly license its patents which were essential to other players...
View ArticleTripAdvisor latest to complain about Google’s alleged abuse of dominant...
TripAdvisor has become the latest business to complain that Google has allegedly abused its dominant position in the way it displays search results. TripAdvisor alleges that the search engine giant...
View ArticleSoftware copyright does not protect functionality, programming language or...
The European Court of Justice has issued an expected but reassuring ruling in a key software case. The case involved SAS, which sought to stop WPL using the same software program language developed by...
View ArticleBusiness gives big thumbs down to proposed new EU data protection laws
The new European Union data protection laws would hit small business hard, according to a letter to Ministers by various business groups, including the Internet Advertising Bureau, the Federation of...
View ArticleICO issues new cookies guidance on the last working day before law goes live
The Information Commissioner’s Office – the UK’s data protection and privacy regulator – has issued guidance on cookies, just hours before the new law became live. Cookies are small files left on...
View ArticleAdvocate General likes the medicine handed out to AstraZeneca by lower court...
Advocate General Mazak has recommended that the European Court of Justice follows the European Union’s lower court, the General Court, in approving the European Commission’s decision and giving a €53m...
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