The honourable justice Louis-Paul Cullen of the Superior Court rendered a judgment on September 23, 2011 which dismissed a motion for authorization to exercise a class action instituted by Mr. Kerfalla Toure (hereinafter "Toure") against Brault & Martineau (hereinafter "B & M) . (1) In order for a class action to be authorized by the Superior Court, the Code of Civil Procedure sets out the four conditions which must be fulfilled ...
Ukraine is a civil law country with the Constitution being a principal source of law. The main sources of civil and commercial law are acts promulgated by the legislative and executive branches of the state. International treaties ratified by Parliament become part of national law and prevail in a conflict with domestic law ...
Today, Google have made the very interesting (but arguably provocative) move of completely rejecting the French data protection regulator's request to put a hold on the implementation of proposed changes to its privacy policies. In doing so it has become the subject of a Europe-wide investigation. What has changed? Up until today, the information collected by Google on each of its platforms, such as Gmail and YouTube, was kept separate ...
The Fourth Circuit has just released its highly anticipated keyword advertising decision in Rosetta Stone Ltd. v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007 (4th Cir. Apr. 9, 2012), vacating much of a district court order favorable to Google ...
A trubunal has ruled that an employee was fairly dismissed for makng vulgar comment to female colleague on his facebook page while at home. A recent decision from a tribunal in Northern Ireland held that an employee was fairly dismissed because comments which he posted on his Facebook page amounted to harassment of a female colleague and was in breach of the employer’s Dignity at Work Policy ...
With the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) grace period for enforcing the new cookies rules almost at an end, companies should work with their website developers at an early stage to ensure compliance. The ICO will soon be confirming that its 12 month ‘lead in’ implementation period has come to an end. Website operators then run the risk of enforcement action and fines if they fail to comply with the new cookies regime ...
On 1 March 2012, Google launched a new privacy policy by consolidating over 60 of its global privacy policies into one document. The new privacy policy does not indicate that Google will collect any new or additional data about users. What it does do, however, is inform people that Google will merge data which it already collects from services such as YouTube and Web History (which records all searches performed on Google ...
New law regarding the use of cookies on websites was introduced in the UK in May last year. Broadly speaking, the new law requires a website owner/operator to: - tell users that cookies are used on its website; - explain to users what the cookies are doing; and - obtain users’ explicit consent to store cookies on their device. The Information Commissioner is responsible for enforcing this new law ...
In the great George Orwell novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the Ministry of Truth is a vast bureaucracy that ironically exists to falsify historical events in the service of political ideology. Its headquarters is an 80-story building of 3,000 rooms, and its outside walls bear the words “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength ...
After several delays, ICANN has published the list of generic top level domain (“gTLD” or “string”) applicants and the gTLDs they have applied for. This new initiative from ICANN will allow a wide variety of entities to act as registrars for gTLDs of their choosing. Once these systems are up and running, consumers will be able to access websites not only ending with .com or .net, but also ending with .NETFLIX, .AOL, and .PIZZA. The list can be found at:http://newgtlds.icann ...
On 20 June 2012, the Court of First Instance (in proceedings brought by the Securities and Futures Commission ("SFC")) ordered Hontex International Holdings Company Ltd ("Hontex") to make a repurchase offer to about 7,700 investors who had subscribed for Hontex shares in the initial public offering in December 2009 or purchased them in the secondary market during the 3 months after its shares were listed (by then the present action was taken by the SFC) ...
Creators of software programs may not be able to prevent the resale of 'used' copies of software programs legitimately paid for and downloaded by their own customers from the internet.It follows a recent Opinion from Advocate General Yves Bot, a legal adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in Axel W. Bierbach (liquidator of UsedSoft GmbH) v Oracle International Corp ...
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes noticed that the guard dog for a famous racehorse did not bark on the night that the horse disappeared and its trainer was found murdered on the moor. 1. Holmes correctly deduced from this that the dog must have known the killer. 2 Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard overlooked the same clue when he earlier accused a stranger of the murder ...
CLS Bank and Bancorp: Back to Back Federal Circuit Decisions Offer Different Conclusions on Patentability 08/03/2012 Richard D. Rochford, Casey H. Kempner The issue of whether particular inventions include “patent eligible” subject matter under § 101 of the patent statute has become highly controversial in recent years, raising questions with high economic stakes and profound legal and philosophical implications. Twice the Supreme Court has entered the fray, first in Bilski v ...
Introduction Title and date of national law The Act on the protection of privacy in relation to the processing of personal data of December 8,1992 (the 'Data Protection Act' or 'DPA') and its Royal Decree of February 13, 2001. Relation with international instruments The DPA implements EU Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals regarding the processing of personal data and the free movement of such data ...
Few may rebate that internet, is majorly responsible for most of the mayor changes in the past fifteen years in fields such as science, communications, technology, commerce amongst other being necessary to adapt the legal system regulating it. Honduras has not been the exception in this modernization process regardless of the civil code nature of its legal system which is not as adaptable as common law systems are ...
While arbitration offers an excellent means for parties to get their disputes settled faster than in traditional courts, how you draft the arbitration clause in a document is critically important for a positive outcome – should a dispute arise. Legal agreements often have a clause indicating that parties agree to settle any disputes arising from the arrangement in arbitration ...
Over the course of 2012, on at least three occasions the Federal Circuit has found anticipation in a situation in which previously the invention would have merely been viewed as obvious:(1) where the prior art merely proposes the steps of the method, without knowledge of whether those method steps will achieve any result, much less the result claimed in the therapeutic method; (2) where the prior art discloses a broader range without providing a “pattern of preference” for a later-claimed narrow
On Aug. 31, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its decision in In re Charter Communications Inc., (2d Cir. Aug. 31, 2012), expressly adopting an abuse of discretion standard for reviewing equitable mootness determinations ...
FAQ on the Belgian Pre-Contractual Information in the Framework of Commercial Co-operation Agreements Act of 19 December 2005.Belgium has a specific legal regime protecting the economically weaker party in certain commercial partnership agreements (i.e. the Pre-Contractual Information in the Framework of Commercial Co-operation Agreements Act of 19 December 2005 – “the Act”) ...
On October 30, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled that an opt-out confirmation text sent by Citibank (South Dakota), N.A. (“Citibank”) did not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). Under a “common sense” interpretation, the court determined that Citibank’s opt-out text does not demonstrate the type of invasion of privacy the TCPA seeks to prevent ...
On November 10, 2012, the German working group on technical and organizational data protection matters published guidelines (in German) on the technical and organizational separation requirements for automated data processing on shared IT systems (the “Guidelines”). The working group is part of the Conference of the German Data Protection Commissioners, which recently concluded its 84th Conference in Frankfurt (Oder) ...
What's all this about penguins, pandas and search engine optimisation? Optimising websites to rank highly in Google search results is a lucrative industry. For years, businesses have employed search engine optimisation (SEO) providers to boost rankings ...
